“I’m guessing your problem requires some sort of healing?” Clover asked them.
“Yes,” a girl from Sevstar College said warily. “But none of us are Healers.”
“No, but I am.” Clover pointed to a Karunang boy whose badge readUnraveler. “And you’re whatmyteam needs to solve our problem.”
“And?” the boy said gruffly.
Clover smiled. “There’s no rule against switching teams.”
The boy blinked, then shook his head. “That would be cheating. I’m no cheater.”
“No, he’s right,” the girl said. “There is only one rule: bloodletting isn’t permitted. If there’s only the one rule, then anything else goes.”
The boy still looked uncertain, though he seemed to reconsider when the nearby teams started whispering among themselves andlooking at the other tables’ placards, having clearly overheard this exchange and wondering if they should go for it themselves.
Clover made a shooing motion with his hand. “Go on. We wouldn’t want them to solve it first, would we?”
The boy darted toward Clover’s group. Clover sat down at his new table and read over their problem. He quickly solved it. The moderator declared his new table the winners, and the crowd burst into applause.
Kai shouldered Baz. “You’re the one who should be up there.”
“You know me.” Baz shrugged. “The limelight’s not where I shine.”
“I pity those who don’t get to see you shine in the shadows.”
Baz met his gaze, unsettled by the intensity in it, the sentiment behind his words.
Before he could respond, the moderator called on Clover. “Since you were the first to solve this challenge’s riddle, you have earned yourself a small advantage for the actual games. The lesson here was that of collaboration. Over the next month, you will have to solve a series ofrealproblems such as these. The first leg will require you to be in pairs. The details will be given to you by our dean of students in a few moments. But before that…” Turning to Clover, he said, “You get to have first pick of your partner. Who will it be?”
Clover made a show of thinking it over as murmurs rose all around him, everyone speculating on what the challenge would entail and who might be his best pick. At last Clover declared: “I choose Baz Brysden of House Eclipse.”
Baz felt the ground tilt beneath him as confused and shocked whispers filled the assembly hall. Clover met his gaze with a wink. “If he feels up for it, of course.”
The moderator gave a nervous laugh. “An Eclipse-born, you’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“But… there is no Baz Brysden here among those who signed up for the games,” the moderator said, looking over a list of names. “There is no Eclipse-born on here at all.”
Clover lifted a brow. “Did you really expect any of them to sign up when we all know the sort of hardships your administration would have put them through if they did? The extra measures you would have them take to restrict their magic? The vitriol they would face from fellow students?”
The moderator sputtered as he tried to come up with an answer. Clover spared him as he continued: “It was a hard-fought battle for Eclipse-born to even be allowed tocometo the Bicentennial, much less partake in its games. After two centuries of this college denying them the same opportunities as the rest of us, you can’t fault them for their mistrust now. Baz Brysden is one of only two foreign Eclipse students who decided to brave coming here despite our strict rules. If he wishes to take me up on my offer, then perhaps he can show you all that Eclipse-born are nothing to fear—and that indeed they might just surpass us all.”
His eyes found Baz again. “Do you accept?”
Baz’s instincts screamed at him to refuse, to not make any ripples in this time he did not belong to. He didn’t want to involve himself in these games he knew would become deadly.
But Clover’s words dislodged something in him. He thought of everyone back in his own time—his father, Professor Selandyn, Jae, even Rusli—who were fighting against Drutten and the Regulators and everything that Baz had been forced to run away from.
Maybe this was his way to fight for the Eclipse-born. To make even the tiniest sliver of difference in the world.
If he could influence the future in this small way, help better things for Eclipse-born, for those he loved, by showing his control and strength here, now, two hundred years in the past…
He had to do it.
“I accept,” Baz heard himself say before he could think twice about it.
“Well… but the list…” sputtered the moderator.
