We’d all been given the terms and conditions to readbefore signing up to become an applicant. I read the document together with my parents, and Father explained how they’d used general language to indicate that pretty much anything went, and anything could happen, and that we wouldn’t know what the games were beforehand, and that there were no guarantees, but that they would do their very best to ensure the safety of the Hands—but it’s the Turning Trials. It’s only games. Nobody’s ever even been hurt in them before!Father had said.
So I’d gone and signed the next day, and that was that.
“Calm down, everyone,” Calren said, and we all wanted to say something at the same time—well.Theydid. Not me. I was feeling pretty good about my silence at the moment. The memory of my own face on that reflection, smiling,understanding,kept me at bay. Reminded me that it was already done. Anything I said here wasn’t going to make a difference, change the past, or even the future.
“Before you say anything,” the Timekeeper said, raising his hand. “I heard you. I heard all of you, and I’m sorry you’ve had to go through that traumatic experience—I am. But this is the Turning Trials. Yes, they are games, but they are noteasygames.”
“Except we’re all told continuously that they should be. Everybody I know, every projection you’ve added to the archives of my court—they all say that these games arenotdangerous, that they’re safe!” Mimi shouted.
“That is what the audience is supposed to believe, Mim-Mim,” said Calren—and again, he had a softness in his eyes and a small, sorry smile on his face I couldn’t care about. “They wantgames.They want entertainment.”
“So youlieto them?!” Levana shouted.
“We don’t lie, no. We only show a specific part of the games.” Calren slowly squatted down in front of us. “I understand that this is not what you expected, but for theLabyrinth to create the Sparetime we need, it requires true magic, and a lot of it.”
“So you’re just going to risk our lives just like that, and never even tell us what we have to do before we go in there?” Erith said, her voice shaking.
“We don’t just risk anybody’s lives. There are protection mechanisms in place for?—”
“Where were those protection mechanisms when Reggie was being sucked dry by a wraith?” My own voice caught me by surprise. “Had we not returned, had we not noticed the change in the loop, had we just continued ahead without him—what kind of a protection would have made sure that he would be among us now?”
“And the others, too?”
“How would they have survived if Silas hadn’t cut the tree open?”
“Andwhy?”
“For what? Where does all that magic even go?!”
“That tree almost fell on us, almost collapsed.”
“We barely made it out alive—barely…”
The others spoke one after the other. Calren listened with his head down, his jaws clenching, his knuckles around the handle of his cane white.
He waited for everyone to stop talking first, then said, “I can’t tell you about the mechanisms of the games, but Icantell you that the games are indeed dangerous. There are protections in place, yes, but ultimately, it is all of you who have the responsibility to keep yourselves safe and alive.” He looked at each and every one of us for a second, then added, “As per the contract you signed before you came here.”
There.That was the only thing that mattered here.
“The magic goes to the Diamonds to harvest, and what you earn stays with you. When the games are over and youwalk out of here, every second you earned in these games will be yours forever.”
“Whatseconds? We have only spent magic, not earn—” Seth stopped talking.
He’d pulled out his Life Clock from his pocket and was looking at it with his eyes wide and his lips parted. Russ and Reggie who were at his sides looked at the face of it, then hurried to pull out their own Life Clocks. Impossible not to do the same, purely instinctively. I wanted to see what they saw, too.
Forty-three minutes. There had been thirty-eight when we first started the second trial and we’d also spent minutes in the Tree of Years. I’dfeltthe magic being consumed when I made those axes, at least.
Yet now, somehow, I had more.
Whispers among the Hands.
I put my Life Clock back inside my pocket. Maybe I could find use for all those minutes when I was out there, but right now I wasin here, and magic wasn’t going to be of any help whentheycould decide whether to allow us to use it at all. We hadn’t been able to do anything with all these minutes when we were in the second level of that tree, not until we broke the time-loop. And then again against wraiths—to use magic on them would have only made it worse.
“Here’s a question for you, Warden,” Mimi said, and she was clearly pissed off. Called himwardenwhen she was definitely Calren’s favorite and she knew it. They had inside jokes during meals, and he seemed to always hang onto every word she said. I thought he genuinely cared about her. “Can you guarantee that we won’t have to deal with timewraiths again in the coming trials? Because I will withdraw from this madness if we do. I willnot putmyself anywhere near a wraith, ever again.”
Mimi’s voice shook, too, broke. A tear slid down hercheek. I didn’t care for her pain, but she did raise a good point.
“So. Can you promise us that there will be no wraiths in the remaining trials?”
