Page 15 of Cage of Starlight

He rolls to his feet too late to avoid the balloon that nails him in the shin, but he recognizes it before it does.

He identifies the clumsy energy of the next projectile the moment it leaves the cannon.

It’s a matter of a step to the left. He barely has to move to avoid the one that follows—a dip like a bow, and it sails over his back.

“Stop them, fool boy! Don’t dodge!” Menden’s voice.

“Good.” That one’s Vantaras, voice dripping with arrogant pride.

The wind kicks up, and Tory’s teeth clack in his skull. He extends his hands and reaches for it. The balloon falters midair—he almost tastes the sputtering there-then-gone-then-there of its blunted presence—but it keeps going, splattering over his shoes.

“When you have it, throw it! Preferably not at me or any of your fellow trainees.”

Now there’s an idea. Where’s Vantaras? But while he can sense his fellow Seeds on the field—CFR energy has a unique fizziness to it, and now that he’s looking for it, their presence is like a busy hive on the periphery of his senses—he can’t sense any energy from Menden or Vantaras.

The space to his left is a void. He’ll make Vantaras suffer later.

He gets back to work, closing his eyes and extending his hands.

He singles out the energy and imagines moving it, opening his eyes as he lobs it in the direction that offers the least resistance—back where it came from.

Tory wrenches the blindfold off to the sight of one of the cannons spinning wildly on its axis. Triumph pumps through him. He flings the kerchief into the mud.

“You happy?”

Vantaras’ lips twist up.

Tory wants to punch them—once for this whole damn farce and again because it worked.

“I am.” Vantaras bends in a graceful arc to pick up the kerchief as he passes, and a pendant tumbles from his uniform jacket—a raw stellite crystal, star-studded even in the day’s gray dimness.

It’s bigger than Tory’s thumbnail, colorful with the galaxy-like glow of nebulescence that only the highest-quality specimens show.

It lacks the faceted polish of the Madam’s earrings in Hulven, but it’s five times bigger—magnitudes more valuable and dizzying with its brilliance.

Vantaras stuffs the thing back into his jacket before Tory can tear it from his throat.

“That’s all I needed to see. I’ll take my leave. ”

Tory shakes mud from his arms and stumbles over to Menden. “Can I stop now?”

“Oh, no. Keep going. We’ll move in when you can drop them all without being hit once. Maybe I’ll put you with the midfielders later for maneuvers!”

*

Maneuvers multiply the chaos of type-training by ten. The balloons still fly, but that’s the least of it. Strange, mechanized spheres—polished metal and over half Tory’s height—roll over the field at bone-breaking speeds, and the CFR unit is forced to maintain formation in spite of them.

“They won’t kill you!” Menden chirps. “You’ll only wish you were dead!”

One of them bowls over a nearby trainee, and Healers—lingering at the edge of the field—rush in to drag him away. He’s bleeding everywhere, crying for people Tory doesn’t know.

“What are they for ?” Tory yells.

“Realism! It’s fine. They only go at half-speed for the midfielders!”

This is half-speed?

Menden steps back, humming a cheerful tune, and opens a well-worn book.

“How do I kill them?” Tory yells, but Menden doesn’t answer.

A man with a floppy thatch of mouse-brown hair, a mess of freckles, and a perpetual smile responds instead. He introduces himself as Randall. “Oh.” He laughs. “You don’t.”

“ Why ?” Tory steals and throws the momentum from one of the wind-up abominations, slowing it for a moment.

Randall’s answer is the same as Menden’s. “Realism!” he says. “Or as close as they can get, which isn’t very.”

“What do you mean ?”

Randall laughs again and keeps talking, like multitasking in a field of projectiles and death-spheres is an everyday occurrence. “Uh, just because? I mean, you don’t kill them. A Legion unit kills you. ”

“Legion?”

“Yeah, ’cause one of them is as good as a whole legion of soldiers,” Randall offers. “Not that I’ve seen a real one! But I visit my girlfriend in the infirmary and sat with one guy the other day while he—you know.”

Tory can guess.

“From what he said, these things here? They’re children’s toys.”

A nearby trainee screams as one of the children’s toys crashes into her and breaks bones. Tory doesn’t have breath to respond, but Randall keeps going.

“The real ones are nothing like these. They can just . . . change shape. Any shape. Heard of one that could disappear, one that killed people before they even saw it. You see one of these things on a battlefield, you’re dead. You and everyone with you.”

Children’s toys or not, the things are ugly.

Any trainees unfortunate enough to encounter them are dragged off the field and sent back once their broken bodies have been sealed by the waiting Healers.

Tory puts what he’s learned to use and steals the kinetic energy off one of the mechanized spheres.

The weight of its stolen momentum pushes against his hands like a boulder.

Tory trembles at the heft of it, then pushes back, so the energy crashes into the rolling bastard he stole it from.

Knocks it back a good few feet when he does it, and Randall laughs like it’s the best entertainment he’s had in years.

“Oh, do it again!”

Tory does it again, and again, until sweat stings his eyes. He manages to mess up the embedded tracks on one of the spheres so nicely that it spins itself in circles for a while.

Randall talks about everything—the quality of the cafeteria’s meat, the weather, Menden, his family, his girlfriend—and the smile never goes.

If this guy’s midfielding, Tory can’t imagine how good the ones closer to the gate are.

He barely manages monosyllabic grunts while he works and still misses as many balloons as he drops.

“Sorry!” Randall jumps in front of Tory and takes a balloon to the chest, clipping Tory’s shoulder as he stumbles back.

“I could’ve gotten that.”

“That’s why I apologized! I needed to take that one.” Randall shakes water from his hair.

“You . . . like getting hit?” Some folks in the Houses were into that. Giving or taking it.

“In a sense!”

When the bell for the end of training sounds, Randall tells him the cooks are making corn hash soup tonight (a good thing) and guides him to the front of the line for healing.

Barring medical emergencies or returnees from the battlefield, theirs is always the first unit allowed into the infirmary, apparently.

“My girlfriend works here,” Randall informs him, waggling his eyebrows. “Sight for sore eyes.” He rolls his shoulder and hisses. “Sore everything.”

Tory can’t hold back a laugh.

First dibs or not, the line is eternal and the wind blows ice-cold.

It’s not worth the wait. Tory slips between storage buildings to head inside and hit the showers.

Hot water—as much as he can stand—will beat the cold from his bones and the ache from his limbs.

A feast of food waits for him when he’s done.

Today, he learned how to defend himself with his powers—and how to attack with them, to throw stolen energy where he wants it to go. He can learn from these people.

As training wore on today, Tory advanced closer and closer to the wall. The best folks are at the front already—near the matte-black cannons and the saw-toothed gate Tory entered through. It opened once or twice during training to let soldiers in or supplies out.

Soon, he’ll be there with the best of them, and he’ll have all the time in the world to figure out how to escape through the gate while these bastards provide him with training he can turn against them when he’s out.

The infiltrators Vantaras scared away are probably the rebels Hasra told stories about.

They were close . If Tory can find them, he can join them.

His petty resistance against Vantaras has felt nice, but Tory wants to try his hand at a real fight. A meaningful one.

These walls would look awfully good as rubble.