Ninth City Burning (26 page)

It turns out us going dark was all part of the exercise, to like test how we react to being totally helpless. Since there was no way any of us would survive that kind of fall, we were supposed to just hang tight on our platforms and hope our thelemity came back before we ended up splattered all over the place. So what I did was exactly right, not that it was some brilliant strategic maneuver or anything. It just seemed like everyone should stay together. I didn't even notice we were upside down half the time. But it meant my squad was the only one ready when that last wave of spheres
came, so at the end, when they count up the points, we've got the most by far. For the first time since I got into this stupid Legion, I'm a big hero. After old Sorril reads off the scores, my whole squad gathers around, slapping me on the back. And then I puke in my helmet.

I don't even mind the puke much, though. I'm already all sweaty under my D-87s, and anyway, I'm sort of used to puke by now. The recruits from my squad actually think it's sort of funny. They give me a hard time, of course, but in like a friendly way. After Sorril dismisses everyone for supper, Spammers and Hexi come over, and Mersh tells the whole story, making me out to be some kind of tough guy. You can tell he's not just saying it, either, because he sounds annoyed it wasn't him saving the day and everything.

Just as Mersh is getting to the part where we all go dark, I see that bivvie girl, Naomi, over with some other recruits. It feels like a dream, sort of, because I can't quite understand what she's doing here. She looks real different from the last time I saw her. Her brown hair is all combed and tied up, and she's dressed in black like a Prip. It makes me pretty sad, thinking about little Naomi being in the Legion. She doesn't seem too upset, though. Actually, she looks quite happy. She's talking to the other bivvies, and they're all real excited about something. The bivvies were about the only other recruits to stay with their platform during the exercise, but I don't think that's what's got them all worked up. Even that guy Thom looks happy. It's hard to tell, because his face is so mean and everything, but I think he's smiling.

Mersh is about finished with his story, and people start giving me a hard time about the puke again, telling me to go wash up or they won't sit with me at supper, so I start heading for the barracks. I'm just about there when I hear someone behind me say, “Torro.”

It's Naomi. I'm not quite sure how she got all the way over here. I didn't see her coming or anything. But I say, “Hey, Naomi. Good to see you.”

She looks like she's about to say something, but then she gets a good look at me and sort of pauses. “You are covered in vomit,” she says.

“Yeah, that was me,” I say. “I'm the vomiter. You know, like, gravity and everything.”

Naomi nods, like she's not very surprised I'd puke on myself. “I was rude to you the last time we saw each other,” she says. “You tried to show me kindness, and I repaid you with scorn. I would like to apologize.”

It takes me a minute to remember what she's talking about. It all
seems like a long time ago. “Oh sure, whatever, no problem,” I say. “What are you doing here anyway, if you don't mind my asking?”

“This exercise was for me as well. My instructor is teaching me to navigate in battle. He wants me to understand that a great deal will depend on me.”

I don't quite know what she means, but then I get it. “You're a source, you mean?”

“I am. Please forgive me for leaving you and your fellow soldiers. I was assured no harm would come to you.”

“It wasn't so bad. No harm done and so forth.”

“I'm glad.”

She doesn't say anything else, just sort of looks at me, so I say, “What were you guys talking about over there? You and your people, I mean?”

She smiles then, not at me, but like she's remembering something. “I had good news for them. My sister, who we thought had died, was found alive and well. We sent a message to our mother today.”

“Hey, that's great!” Suddenly I feel real happy. Like, I don't even know this sister, but I'm still happy.

I guess Naomi's the sort of person who doesn't talk just to say things. I mean, it's obvious she thinks it's great her sister's back, but I just said that, so she doesn't need to say it again. All she says is “It was good to see you, Torro. I suggest you have a bath.”

She's about to go, but then I blurt out, “Hey! Hey, Naomi!”

She turns around and looks at me. “Yes?”

I guess I
am
the sort of person who talks just to say things. I didn't really have anything to tell her. I just wanted to talk to her a little more. Now I don't know what to say. “Hey, what are pawns?” I ask, because it's all I can think of.

“What do you mean?” she says. She looks pretty confused.

“I heard your people say it a while back. They said we're pawns.”

Naomi thinks about that a minute, then she says, “It is from a game my people have, a game of strategy, called chess. There are several different pieces, each with its own role and abilities. The pawn is the most abundant piece, but also the weakest. Chess is a game of battle, and pawns make up the front line.”

“Yeah, right.” I feel a little sick all of a sudden. Those bivvies were right. Pawns. That's exactly what we are.

“Pawns are small, but they are also very important,” Naomi says. She's
probably figured out what I'm thinking. She's being pretty nice about it, too. “You and I can play a game of chess sometime, and I will show you. For now, I must go. My instructor is waiting.”

She tilts her head toward a sort of short, chubby guy standing off toward the barracks. I hadn't seen him before, and I don't know how Naomi did, since he's behind her. I'm about to say something, but then the chubby guy sort of shimmers, like there's a shadow passing over him. Some of the recruits heading off to supper call for me to come along, and I wave to them, to like let them know I'll be along shortly. When I look back, though, Naomi and the chubby guy are both gone. It's just me and the other pawns.

W
hen I heard I would be attending an Academy of magic, I was prepared for the place to be somewhat mystifying in its habits and culture. Tales make up a kind of currency among my people, and in our stories, witches and wizards are common. They are a favorite especially of children, who will wait excitedly all day for the next installment of whatever saga is being told around our fires, but also in the townships, where any mention of things supernatural is roundly discouraged, and is as such irresistible to everyone, the authorities most of all. One tale I have always loved tells of a school for young magicians, a rambling castle of infinite mystery, filled with monsters and spirits and delightful clutter. It is as if this Ninth City were made to be as unlike that place as possible. Though it is built on magic, it seems composed entirely of straight lines and even curves, of bold and heavy geometry. This city does not ramble. Everywhere I look is clean, towering symmetry. In my travels, I have surveyed some of our continent's more repugnant locales, but this must be the least magical place I have ever visited.

The Academy itself has the outward appearance of a bunker built to repel the aggressions of flaming meteors, or such is my impression of the blocky buildings along its farthest exterior, within shouting distance of the city's limits. What I find beyond is a city within a city, a warren of narrow streets and buildings tall enough to tickle the clouds, interspersed with courtyards varying in size from a few feet in diameter to a scale so vast that my entire coda could circle our wagons three times around and have room to spare, all of it rising in tiers like battlement walls toward Ninth City's center, where stands the crown of buildings known as the Forum. The farther up you go, the more the architecture softens, from the blunt stone
slabs of the exterior to something reminiscent of an old church in the center, but always there is the sense of facing a wall, something built to keep outsiders at bay.

Beyond the high parapets and steep, cliff-like towers, there is one more barrier yet to pass: the “entrance evaluations” required for all new arrivals to the Academy's School of Rhetoric. For long-standing cadets, those who have already been through the School of Grammar, the evaluations are a deal more involved, lasting a full month and granting those who distinguish themselves a speedy track to power and prestige. In the case of myself and other recruits culled from outside Ninth City, expectations are not so high. The Academy's Board of Examiners has allotted me one day, and they make it clear even that is likely more than necessary to get the measure of me.

I cannot allow that sort of insult to pass without comment, but my objections are met only with a soliloquy on Academy policy, which prescribes this manner of truncated testing as a way of looking after the safety of its recruits and the sanity of its Examiners. The Academy's training is so rigorous and thorough, I am told, that it is pointless as well as dangerous to hold new recruits to the same standards as those advancing from its lower schools. At the conclusion of my first year, there will be a new round of examinations in which I will have the chance to compete with Academy cadets on an equal footing, but just now I am deemed likely only to waste the Examiners' time and injure myself in the process. I tell them I've had seven solid years' learning on my own, but all they do is smile and say they doubt it's the sort of education you get at the Academy. “Damn right,” I say. “I guess you never met a Walker before.”

They haven't, either.

The venue for my entrance evaluations is an exercise ground nestled amid a hive of fields and arenas, some so bizarre in composition that I cannot begin to imagine what sort activities are conducted there. I am somewhat relieved to see the place my Examiners lead me is among the least supernatural in character, its only unusual feature being a tendency of the terrain suddenly to change shape or altitude. There is a game in progress when we arrive, something that involves groups of cadets rushing back and forth across turf constantly rearranging itself into mountains and valleys, but the sport is broken up, its players unceremoniously banished, and the ground flattened to make room for my first test, a run of fifty laps around a track raised out of the ground just for me.

Instead of taking their games elsewhere, the displaced cadets retire to a set of nearby stands and erupt into hoots of encouragement as I complete each circuit. My last burn of speed earns a round of appreciative applause and approving mutters from my Examiners as they confer over their timepieces. “Let's start her on course five,” I hear one of them say, a tall, older man, with a high forehead and face built perfectly for looking down his nose.

There is an outbreak of booing and raspberries from the cadets in the stands, who I gather had been hoping for a different result. I for my part would just like a few minutes to catch my breath. I watch with some concern as the field's flat track forms itself into an uneven terrain of hurdles and pits and scaling walls, until I notice my Examiners have again turned their attention my way. “Let's move, Recruit,” says the old man, his tone all weary forbearance.

His obvious boredom pricks my pride, and I decide to make an example of “course five,” not so much navigating the thing as running roughshod over it. Courses eleven, fifteen, and twenty-one all get the same treatment. When I finish course twenty-four, I am made to stop so the collar I have been fitted with to prevent me cheating by magic may be inspected. I wait with satisfaction as the Examiners confirm the honesty of my performance, then summon course thirty to great adulation from the audience of cadets. It is a diabolical assortment of rings and bars and precarious points of balance, much of it passable only by sheer muscle. But climbing trees and rocks and the faces of cliffs is all in a day's work for a scout of the Autumn Walkers, and if called to, I can hang by my arms all day.

“Hardly one cadet in a hundred finishes course thirty,” my stern old Examiner confides after I have done just that, thereby earning the courtesy of being spoken to directly, it seems. I've discovered he is a Praeceptor of the Academy, which is to say the head of one of its three schools—Philosophy, in his particular case.

“Your lessons could use a few more mountains,” I reply with a grin.

Next comes the test in marksmanship. I have a chance to rest and work the tightness from my forearms as a firing range is erected and the weapon I am to use demonstrated. I am glad to learn no magic will be required, as my only experience with the Legion's weaponry had been as a target, and I am not eager to attempt it for the first time when my reputation is at stake. The gun I am given is, overall, not so different from the rifle I've carried in my saddle holster all these years—only a deal lighter
and deader in its aim. Once I've got the hang of it, I pick off my targets as easy as popping the heads off daisies.

“Unarmed combat is scheduled next,” the Praeceptor of Philosophy tells me after an extended conference with his fellow Examiners. “Normally at this point we'd have the recruits pair off and demonstrate on each other, but as you're our only recruit today, and rather older than most, I and the other Examners have arranged for a sparring partner more suited to your circumstances.”

“All right, bring him out,” I say. “No sense fooling around.” The crowd in the stands has increased since my examination began, and I wonder if my opponent might be sitting up there, but as I look down the rows of cadets, I see a new wave of excitement, and turn to find the Praeceptor has removed his jacket and donned a magic-dimming collar of his own. He watches me down his long nose, rolling his neck and cracking his knuckles.

He seems somewhat ancient for a fair fight, but I have watched many a thick-necked young ogre fall to men older than he, and I know to approach with care. Sure enough, he squares off with a stance I have never seen before, and though I have youth and strength on my side, and my own method of weaponless fighting learned among the scouts, the simple economy of his movements is such that I have difficulty keeping up. But I have tricks enough to take him by surprise once or twice, nor does he quite anticipate my willingness to take a beating for the chance to deal one out. It is plain also that he does not expect me to be anything but a simple and forthright brawler. By the time the Board calls a halt to the fight, I am down spitting blood, my left arm hanging limp, and a black eye forming, but the Praeceptor of the Academy's School of Philosophy has been put on his back twice and awarded a swollen mouth and a brace of broken ribs in the bargain. With a bloody grin on his lips, he helps me to my feet, our spectators roaring with delight at the unexpected spectacle of our duel.

There is a sort of intermission while I and the Praeceptor are ministered to by a specialized sort of physician called a “chigurrus.” His techniques must be similar to those that healed my broken leg, because in minutes my opponent and I are both of us nearly good as new, though the Praeceptor has swallowed one or two teeth, which we're told may take some days to regrow. Meanwhile, the geography of our activity field has altered once again, this time into a set of small and generally uninteresting booths and stations.

When the chigurrus has pronounced me once again fit for testing, my Examiners remove my collar and set me to what they call “a series of simple exercises involving thelemity.” Our audience of cadets, which had been clamoring for a battle royal between myself and several other notable school officials, emits a groan of disappointment. The exercises are simple indeed, intended only to get an idea of my natural talent, a thing I am assured can only take me so far.

At my Examiners' request, I conjure a small globe of light, cool a glass of water by touch, incinerate a block of wood, cause a ripe apple to dry and wither. The final task involves putting a ball through a hoop some two hundred yards distant, a difficult problem as the misty claws of my influence do not extend nearly so far. My solution, to fire the thing in cannonball form across the field, garners less-than-universal praise from my Examiners, but I can hear some of them chuckling as the ball lands, smoking and deflated, on the hoop's rim, resting a moment before sliding down and through.

I reckon I am about on pace to begin my Academy career as the greatest cadet ever to walk its hallowed halls—until I am introduced to the written portion of my evaluation. I am escorted to a large hall filled with long tables and there subjected to the most bewildering interrogation I have ever endured, what is called a “standardized test.”

Mama and Papa took sound interest in their children's education, and I always considered myself furnished with decent knowledge of the world and its workings. I have a good head for sums, enough to keep track of my family's trades and calculate using the odd weights and measures of the townships. I understand the human form well enough to patch it when it's hurt or slice it into choice fillets. I know which plants are good to eat, which have salubrious qualities, and which you'd want to think twice about putting in your mouth. I can navigate by the stars, render a landscape in pen and ink with passable verisimilitude, and recite long stretches of epic poetry from memory, though I have been told my performances lack dramatic flair. But the entirety of my life's learning is not enough to answer even one of these questions with any confidence. It does not help that the entire test is written in Aux, which I do not read nearly so well as I speak it, but even were it not filled with unfamiliar words and turns of phrase, I doubt I could suitably follow one question in twenty.

A few pages in, I have utterly exhausted my training in numbers, and my
mastery of the natural sciences gives out soon after. I begin flipping through the great block of paper that comprises my examination book, just to confirm the rest is more of the same. At the end is a section devoted to an area of learning called “irrational mechanics,” which I gather to mean the study of magic, though this is by no means a certainty from the problems I read:

1. Explain three significant distinctions between ingenic and palaketic devices, citing practical examples for each.
   
2. List the five canonical methods for composing compound infusions, along with their primary and secondary syntactic styles.
   
3. Describe the simplest process for clearing a path 3m high by 3m wide through a wall of solid iron 10m thick, using only techniques derived from manifestation. Assume efficiencies of 1.00 for all basic energies, with the exception of heat (2.00), muity (0.75), akyrity (0.50), electricity (2.50), and viaty (2.75). Show your work.
   

I am rereading this last question, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the word “muity,” when I hear a loud throat-clearing and discover my examination proctor standing over me. She has been introduced to me as Praefector of the School of Grammar and is the only member of the Board left to supervise me, a job she plainly resents. She is small but ramrod straight, and like my other Examiners, rather advanced in years. The entire left side of her head, from her cheek to the top of her scalp, is marked with a strange crisscrossing pattern of purple-red, like a projection of light or shadow that colors everything it touches, whether skin or hair or, alarmingly, her whole left eye. Grammar is the school for the Academy's youngest cadets, and I can only imagine the terror this woman must inspire there with this blank red eye, now turned disapprovingly on me. It seems I have been laughing at my test, and my proctor is interested to know just what I find so funny.