Page 23

Kindness Terra turned to face the group trailing her and tossed the two knives to the ground, the clatter and clang shocking the class to silence. In the shadows around the chamber’s raised perimeter, scores of other acolytes had gathered, older girls expecting a show.

“I will select the combatants from among the volunteers.” Terra’s near-white eyes scanned the class. “Or from the cowards if there are no volunteers. The victor will be allowed to ask a favour—this will not include leaving the Academy.” A hand went up. “Acolyte Wenda?”

“How will the victor be decided?”

If Bek had asked, a good portion of the class would have smirked at her foolishness. Wenda, being the best knife among them, and having never once smiled in the more than a year they had kept her company, was not to be laughed at. She had never made any threat of retribution—rather her whole person embodied the essence of such a threat.

“The victor will be the one who isn’t dead.” Kindness Terra indicated the blades on the ground between them. “Volunteers come forward.”

Wenda, who despite her grim demeanour had never shown any hostility to her fellow acolytes beyond repeatedly winning every knife fight, stepped forward.

Sharp swaggered after Wenda, bumping into Bek’s shoulder on the way. “You could ask to be excused from the Hard Run if you won,” she murmured.

Bek felt tempted. She might not be quite as good as Wenda or Sharp, but she was good. Luck plays its part in any fight. Perhaps…

“I’ll do it.” Mollandra stepped forward meekly. Head down, face hidden in the sea of blond curls that she refused to cut despite the dangers of such tresses.

“No!” Bek reached for the girl, but Einsa pushed her arm down. The Kindness would not approve. “She’ll die,” Bek hissed. Mollandra was at best average with a knife, far too defensive. She never got badly injured but that was perhaps because the others took pity on her—she was still small for her age and never stood up for herself. The best you could say for her was that she was lucky.

“She decided,” Einsa murmured, her face a mix of pride, astonishment, and horror.

“This isn’t right.” Bek shook Einsa off, coughing. None of it was right. Not one piece of the Academy, from deepest dungeon to tower top, was in the least bit right.

“No one else?” Kindness Terra ran a cold eye over the trio of volunteers as if deeply underwhelmed. Nobody came forward. Bek stood, every muscle trembling with the need for action, torn by a dozen emotions. If she volunteered, the Kindness would pick her and Mollandra to fight each other. She knew it.

Kindness Terra looked around a final time. “Then Acolyte Mollandra will fight Acolyte Wenda.”

As those not fighting spread out around the edge of the duelling circle, Bek reached for the knife concealed at Einsa’s hip. The big girl caught her wrist. “What are you doing?”

“Something stupid.” The wheeze was in her voice all the time now.

“Well, I won’t let you,” Einsa hissed, pushing Bek away. “Especially not with my knife.”

Bek met Einsa’s hard stare. “I decided.” If Mollandra could decide, then so could she.

“So I get to lose both of you on the same day?” Einsa hadn’t shown any real emotion in all the time Bek had known her. Scorn and irritation had been her limits. But it was there now, leaking past the impressively strong walls that protected her inner self. Fear colouring her voice. Fear and something more.

Bek banged a fist against her chest. “You can’t keep carrying me. And maybe I can be the one to make a change…” She paused as Kindness Terra’s disapproval swept across them. In the ring Mollandra and Wenda had both taken up their knives. Bek reached again for Einsa’s and this time the girl let her take it.

“Don’t…”

“I will.” Bek locked eyes with Einsa once more, then tore herself away, moving slowly around the circle as if hunting for a better view.

Kindness Terra stepped back from the combatants and the class made room for her at the edge. Bek still had no clear idea of what she was going to do, how long her nerve would hold, or how far it would take her. She should have volunteered for the fight—she knew that now. She had missed that chance and Mollandra had taken it. For a horrified moment Bek halted, midstep, seized by the sudden conviction that it had been to stop her having to do the Hard Run that Mollandra had volunteered. She shook the notion off. Even Mollandra wasn’t that dumb.

Bek came closer to the Kindness. In the ring Wenda and Mollandra had clashed once, and surprisingly both had come away unscathed. All eyes were on the pair as they circled, looking for advantage.

Another flurry of activity and somehow it was Wenda who broke off, holding one arm to her chest, staining the light grey cloth with her blood.

Whispers started around the circle. This wasn’t how Mollandra fought. The acolyte had been disguising her skill. Wenda would be more careful now. She would still win, they said. Bek suddenly wasn’t so sure. It was hard to fight while carrying a wound, and the fear that the pain put into you was not your friend. Pain urged you to caution, but a knife fight required that you gamble with your skin.

Bek reached her destination, right behind Kindness Terra. Her decision shouldn’t depend on who was winning the fight. This wasn’t about who was friends with who, this was far bigger than that. The wrongness, the evil of the Academy extended endlessly, but if all the students, the remnants of a thousand, were to say no together, how could three Kindnesses stand against them?

Even so, with Kindness Terra’s black-robed back within the reach of her arm, and Einsa’s knife gripped tighter than tight in her fist, Bek paused and watched past the woman’s shoulder to see Mollandra close with Wenda once more. Both girls’ faces showed only focus, Mollandra’s bright blue eyes locked to Wenda’s dark ones.

Wenda lunged, snapping out her knife thrust. Almost too fast for the eye and with unnatural grace Mollandra twisted inside the attack and drove her own blade into Wenda’s side. The collective gasp had only just started when Wenda somehow slashed Mollandra across the face and, as the girl staggered back, caught her with a spinning kick to the head just as Instructor Suni had taught them. The stab at her ribs seemed not to have harmed Wenda at all.

Mollandra fell like a tree taken by the axe.