The fist came flying and Cain didn’t try to duck. The darkness became darker. Cain spun from the force and fell to the ground as the others rushed toward him, their footsteps ringing in the quiet alley, one of their boots catching his eye. Cain, under the pretense of putting up a fight, grabbed at the hem of one of their trousers. A sleek and thin fabric. He tried to tear it but despite its lightness, it held strong. There was only one kind of fabric Cain knew that had this quality.
One of the boots connected with his spine. He involuntarily screamed in pain and arched his back, but curled quickly back into the fetal position, protecting the case that contained his spectacles.
The blows continued. The well-placed kick had apparently been a bit of blind luck, as the subsequent ones only hit the top half of his back and his forearms, which he held up as offerings to protect his stomach and chest. These assailants were not, evidently, used to violence. And the soldier from before? She was watching the beating unfold with her arms crossed, her sharp gaze shifting from the alley entrance to Cain and back again.
He’d known they had no intention of killing him. If they had, the soldier would have dispensed with the interrogation and instead let the sword she had discreetly fastened beneath her coat speak for her. But whatever their intentions, even fools might eventually land a kick to the back of his head that could accidentally kill him.
As the beating got rougher, Cain carefully but firmly bit the inside of his cheek and coughed dramatically, spitting blood onto the alley floor.
The first man, startled, took a step back.
“Wait, wait! Stop, stop it now.”
There was fear in his voice. The others stopped kicking Cain and looked at one another. The legionary woman walked calmly to Cain and prodded him with her foot; Cain hoped he seemed badly injured but not fatally so, but the woman saved him the trouble of further acting.
“He’s fine. It takes more to kill a man than that.”
The man with the soft trousers mopped his brow with his hand.
“If you keep going around making trouble,” he said to Cain, “we’ll kill you in your sleep.”
The five of them left Cain sprawled on the ground and disappeared down the alley. It was quiet now, almost like they’d neverbeen there at all. A bit delirious, Cain laughed, but it came out in a real cough.
Lying there, he wondered. There weren’t many Kamori in the Imperial Capital. Certainly not many who could afford to wear Cassian velvet. This neighborhood was full of shadowy figures who wouldn’t hesitate to commit worse things than murder for a small price. But the fact that instead such tender-palms should cross paths with him gave him pause.
He rolled to his back and heard a window slam shut above him. Just as he noted it was the one on the third floor to the left, the candle in it went out too. Briefly, he considered coming back the next night to ask them what they had seen.
As he rose from the ground Cain touched his jaw where the first punch had landed. The raw wound was wet, and it stung. If he was lucky, there could be an impression of the ring the man had worn. The streetlamp’s blue light came back with a flicker, restoring the long, ghost-like shadows to their proper places on the alley walls.
Cain took the steel case from his inner pocket and put his spectacles back on.
3ARIENNE
To be a first-year student studying at the Division of Sorcery in the Imperial Academy was to live in fear. The Academy had so many rules it was impossible to remember them all, and you could be punished for any infraction, real or imagined. And not only by the housemaster; the upperclassmen acted as enforcers too. A majority of your first year was spent cowering, terrified of leaving your dorm room except for classes and meals.
But eventually, as you numbed to the terrifying reality of your everyday, it would slowly become clear that this was all bluster. The Academy’s harsh reputation was just that: reputation. By the start of your second year, you would realize that you could stay out all day and night, you could partake of anything and everything the Capital had to offer; as long as you were back by morning, there would be no consequences. In everyday life, it would be not so different from the mundane divisions of the Academy where non-sorcerers studied.
Still, the inkling of fear you felt at the start would never quite leave you; it helped you remember that being here was not a choice, and that there were some rules that must not be broken no matter what year you were, or even if you were a professor: You must not try to escape. You must not enter the underground chamber where the Power generator resided.
In her sixth year at the Division of Sorcery at the Eleventh College of the Imperial Academy, Arienne found herself about to break both rules at the same time.
Late in the afternoon, Arienne put her boyfriend, Felix, under a sleeping spell in his room. Making sure nobody was in the hallway, she slipped out of the dormitory through a back window, unnoticed. As far as anyone knew, she was still in that room with him. Arienne felt a slight pang of guilt—confusion and chaos awaited him when he woke up. Maybe he would even be dragged away to the Office of Truth. Ifshehadn’t already been dragged there before him.
The sleeping spell wasn’t anything her professors had taught her. The Academy never taught them spells—such wereun-Imperialrelics of the past. She had learned it from Kaya, a Bachrian girl one year senior who liked to show off the beautifully crafted scars on her shoulders. Kaya had told everyone that she had learned a smattering of hedge magic from an old grimoire she discovered in the library and subsequently lost, but she later confessed to Arienne that her teacher had been a rogue witch hiding from the Empire, back in her southern home province.
Unlike Kaya, Arienne had not known any spells at all when she took the mandatory admission test at the age of ten. Amongthe half dozen Arlander children suspected of magic, only she was ordered to the Imperial Capital that year. It was the duty of all sorcerers to enroll in the Imperial Academy. In the fringes of the Empire, where the Office of Truth was unable to administer regular testing, undetected magical children grew up to be feral sorcerers, or so the rumors said. But since Arland was a small province firmly under Imperial rule, she had always known such a life would never be hers, ever since the moment she felt the first violet thrum of magic in her. But still.
Her parents were compensated generously for handing Arienne over without complaint. The villagers put on a grand party for her, as if she were going to the Capital to get a fancy job. There was a cake shaped like an old woman sorcerer wearing a conical hat and a long robe with star patterns, striking a dramatic pose. The baker was repeatedly stroking his bald head, looking pleased with his work. After that day, Arienne never spoke to her parents again.
She had already known what kind of life was waiting at the Imperial Academy, and hated her sorcerer’s fate for it. If she had ever tried to escape, she would have been hunted down and killed. Even that would have been no escape from what the Empire had planned for her, for all sorcerers. But things had changed recently. She now had achanceat a different fate, something undreamed of till now.
Arienne crossed the courtyard, the hood of her robe pulled low to avoid recognition, and entered the library in the main building. She waited there like a mouse for hours, crouched between the dusty corner shelves no one visited. When the librarian finished reshelving and finally went home close to midnight, Arienne crept out of the library to the other side of the building where the entranceto the basement was. No one stood guard; no oneneededto stand guard with the eye insignia of the Office of Truth hanging above the iron door, dissuading her from what she was determined to do.
The Office of Truth oversaw sorcerers, along with all things magical. Most Imperial heartlanders thought of them as the sorcerer-engineers who manufactured and operated Power generators. For provincials, they were the inquisitors who would take you away at night if you were found practicing the old faiths. But to all sorcerers, they were the lords and jailers, in life and in death, never to be defied. Arienne knew enough horror stories involving hapless sorcerers and macabre inquisitors to bite her thumbnail in hesitation.
Her heart calmed a little bit at the sight of rust covering the door—and a corner of the Office insignia. Nobody, inquisitor or not, seemed to have been through this door in years. She sighed as she felt inside her sleeve pocket for the key stolen for this occasion.
Arienne had flunked the previous three years at the Academy. She couldn’t focus herself on whatever it was the Empire desired of her. Even before coming here, she had known they wouldn’t be teaching her spells. But she hadn’t expected the sorcery curriculum to consist mainly of weird calisthenics and brainteasers. The Academy wanted her, first and foremost, to keep her body and mind primed for her eventual transformation into a Power generator—the fate of all sorcerers in the Empire upon their deaths. There were also classes on the theory and practice of Power generators, which were not nearly as emphasized unless you wanted to be a sorcerer-engineer. Other subjects, like history, literature, and music, were offered as well, and were taught with the same depth as in other, mundane divisions of the Academy, but such subjects were“academics,” which in the Division of Sorcery was code for “things that don’t matter.” Her third flunking report card had a red note attached saying that she would make a Class Eight generator at best, and such a poor result guaranteed only minimum pension. Nobody cared about her academics scores, which were quite high.
