Instead, he asked, “Would you dine with me this evening?”
My chin lifted with shock, but I managed a quick nod. I wasn’t sure if this made me more or less likely to be in trouble.
He narrowed his eyes. “Why do you look so surprised?”
“It’s only … I didn’t think we’d spend any free time together.” That was the kind of relationshipotherapprentices would have with their Seniors—mentorship and a shared understanding of what it felt like to contain the boundless potential of radiance. That wasn’t what I expected from Julian and his barely concealed contempt for me. “You did ask me to acclimate myself to … a professional dynamic,” I reminded him, trying not to smirk.
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t make it sound like we’re off to a picnic. I’d simply like to hear your impressions of Frostbrook and potential improvements to its infrastructure. There’s no sense in waiting until after supper to hear your report.”
“Oh.” I didn’t entirely believe him and didn’t know what to make of that. He had no reason to lie to me. “Of course.”
Dining with Julian meant I needed to serve both of us instead of snacking on whatever I grabbed from the larder or the basket left outside. I hurried to wash the grease from my knuckles and the sweat from my face and to cobble together a light meal of tart berries and bread with soft cheese. I was too impatient to wait for the coals at the hearth to mellow and thus scorched the bread and the cheese.
In my haste, I’d also forgotten to put the teakettle on. Heating water was simple, but Conductors were forbidden from applying their radiance to something as frivolous as cooking. If Julian was anywhere near as talented as people said, he’d taste radiance on the water. One more reason to dislike me.
I wondered if he’d made tea in the middle of the night with the other boys at the House of Industry. As a little girl, holding a ceramic kettle and willing the water inside to bubble to life had delighted me more than any other task—likely because of the very fact that it wasn’t allowed. And we had few opportunities to break the rules.
Professor Dunn caught me more than once, and each time she’d pulled me aside to tell me that she understood the impulse to rebel, but that I must never do it outside the House of Industry, must never heat water for others to drink.
The rule didn’t make sense to me, but neither did many of the regulations that structured our lives as Children of Industry. It wasn’t my place to question the Elders of the House or what we weren’t allowed to do. Who weren’t allowed to care about.
Thinking back, it had been Professor Dunn who had taught me most spontaneously. Little lessons that had spawned from my impulses and minor failures. I wondered what she’d seen in me to be so patient, to take the time to remind me how to use my radiance properly.
As I carried the dinner tray, wobbling my way up narrow steps, my mind wandered to something Ezra had said about shooting bolts of radiance like lightning. How had he known that Children of Industry could do that? How much did regular townspeople know about the House? I’d assumed very little.
In my effort to recall exactly what Ezra had said, I nearly toppled the tray over. When I stumbled through the door, barely regaining my balance, Julian watched me, one brow arched delicately. He sat at the clean table. His desk, as before, was a mess of papers and letters and thin bound books. I wondered once more at the sketches—they didn’t look like Mission plans. But it wasn’t my place to meddle in his things. With what I’d heard of Julian’s academic achievements, he was probably studying something unnecessarily complicated. The strange conduction coil at his workspace was even more disassembled than before,each individual piece placed neatly alongside what remained intact. I was certain he knew exactly how to put it back together.
“You always look as if you’re freshly bathed and groomed,” I said, cross. I hadn’t meant to make the observation out loud, but my concentration was spread too thin.
To my surprise, he laughed. It wasn’t a terrible sound. “I’ve heard worse insults, Apprentice.”
“How do you manage that feat?” I set the tray down. “Even in Sterling City, I never felt as clean as you look. I always had sweat and grime on me before noon.”
“I avoid the worst of that by staying inside as much as I can manage.” Julian helped himself and divvied the food between us, giving me a fair—if not larger—portion. “I prefer the company of my studies to the wilderness around us.”
“But it’s so beautiful here. I could stare at the mountains all day.”
He seemed taken aback by my opinion, his fingers hovering above his little plate of berries. “You like it?”
“How could I not?” Absolutely starving, I spoke around a mouthful of chewy bread. “I didn’t think I’d want to be in the country, but it’s so alive. Everywhere I look is like a painting. And it smells nice.”
Julian looked down as if trying to hide a smile. “It does smell nice.”
“Did you always live in Sterling City?” I wasn’t sure how long we’d keep this up, this easy back-and-forth. I found myself hoping it would continue, if only to drive away the growing loneliness of a Mission shared by two strangers.
“No, I was born on the southern coast,” he said absently, his attention having returned to the mess of scorched cheese I’d made.
I’d always wanted to see the southern coast. “Is it true that fruit grows from trees in the winter and lizards crawl about everywhere?”
Julian tore a small piece of bread so carefully, it made me rethink shoving most of my portion directly into my mouth at once. “Lizards and bugs as big as your fist. But I was only there when I was veryyoung. I can’t recall much. The way a dream remains just out of reach.”
“The wasting,” I said, sobering. I had no idea it had made it all the way to the southern coast. “It took your parents?”
He nodded with a soft hum.
My bread abruptly tasted like sawdust. When I managed to swallow, I voiced a question that felt like a sore on my tongue: “Don’t you ever wonder why we were all orphaned?”
Julian’s gaze snapped to mine. His fingers stilled in their efforts to tear bread into small bites. “How we were orphaned doesn’t matter. The Elders believe that Industry chose to only bless orphans. Without families, we are free of relationships that might distract us from our calling. You believe that, do you not?”
