Meanwhile, Calren was already writing again, scribbling, drawing—his eyes remained on the paper, both his hands moving impossibly fast. Any faster and the tips of his pencils were going to start steaming.
He did indeed lookout of sync—his hands seemed to be moving like they belonged to two different people, not one.
“Just help us!” Mimi called, while Anika and Seth rushed us back toward the door, told us to keep moving, that we needed to leave.
“We know they’re lying to us, but we don’t know who to trust,” Russ said. “If you know anything,helpus. We’ve forgotten!”
That was the last time Calren looked at all of us at once—somehow, like when you looked at the Great Clock from any angle, and you always saw its face.
And he said, “You’re not done forgetting yet.”
We triedto get him to talk again, to listen. To look at us, but Calren only continued to scribble away on his papers like we weren’t even there.
We tried hard and long, we did.
Eventually, we calmed down and left. Eventually, we walked right out of the Out of Sync room, up the stairs and back to the palace. The sun had unset and the windows let through so much light now that it felt we were in a new world altogether.
None of us said a single thing all the way back to our rooms.
43
We would no longer have classes with Master Talik, apparently. When Elida came to find us the next day, she was sweating, and it was so easy to see the discomfort she was in, I didn’t have the heart to even mention Calren to her. Neither did the others.
Besides, we all knew by then that Elida was not a decision-maker of any kind. She was only doing her job.
Then again, so was Calren, and so werewe…before.
But she didn’t take us to the workshop of Master Talik this time. She said that, for the final two days of the backward trials, we were going to be listening to lectures on all courts by Miss Ren, a retired Diamond coordination officer, and lectures on timekeeping by Lefa James,not-a-royalTimekeeper, Elida specified.
The first (second?) parts of the day would be reserved for Asha in the arena, though she would be the one to tell us whatwe’d be working on the remaining two days.
To think that I wouldn’t be seeing Master Talik again was… strange. There had been something about that old man, something…just there,yet I couldn’t really place it.
Hadn’t there been something I’d wanted to talk to him about, I wondered? Hadn’t there beensomething?
I couldn’t remember for the Time in me.
Miss Ren was a round-faced woman with dark hair that fell in gorgeous waves all the way down to her hips. She wore a silver dress with a red and white rose just over her heart, and she smiled, too, like her life depended on it. Like she was sure that we were going to see right through her if shedidn’tsmile like she was about to melt into a pile of goo.
I thought it would be interesting to hear her lectures at first. We all learned at home about courts, but we learned about our courts, our ways, our traditions. We only touched on the other courts superficially. I thought I’d want to know more about Hearts and Clubs and Diamonds, especially about the harvesting process of Sparetime. I’d always been interested in that, except the moment Miss Ren started to speak, my mind drifted away. I wasn’t one to not pay attention in class, not until today.
But there was just something about…something.
The others were the same. We were all very confused, all looking ahead, sometimes at Miss Ren, sometimes out the window of the classroom they put us in, never listening. The sun shone outside. The sky was blue. Time continued to move backward. And I continued to feel more and more like myself, but also less. In a way, much less.
The lecture ended, and when we walked out of the class, I found I hardly remembered the woman’s name, let alone her lecture. But we had a break for an hour before lunch, and I planned to get myself together until then.
“I didn’t know.”
I was walking together with the others back to our dorm to freshen up. Nobody had really spoken to one another since we met Calren. Nobody had much to say that could besaid freely, without fear of being heard or without bursting into tears.
It was Levana who’d spoken to me this time, though. Which surprised me.
“I was mean because I didn’t know what you had to give up,” she told me, and my jaw almost touched the floor.
I looked at her profile, her pixie nose and full cheeks. She was absolutely stunning—and she was actually apologizing to me for treating me the way she did…before. In her own way, at least.
Warmth slipped under my skin. “I know. Me neither,” I said. I’d had no idea that I’d had to give up compassion in the forward trials, and that she and the others had had to do the same.
