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Chapter Eleven

B riony

“While I understand your need to find out what happened to your sister,” Fly says, bouncing his fork up and down in his dinner, “does this mean we are officially geeks now and will be spending all our time with our noses in books?”

“I’m from Granite Quarter. Both my parents are doctors. Being a geek is in my blood,” Clare says, taking a mouthful of pasta and turning her page, eyes not leaving her book.

“What’s your excuse?” Fly says, kicking me under the table to get my attention. “I didn’t think you kids from Slate could read.”

“Huh?” I say, peering up from my book and staring blankly at him.

“Is it that interesting?” he says, “or am I way more boring than I realized? ”

“You are a bit of a bore,” I tell him with a grin, “but there’s just so much information in these books. It’s going to take us an entire year just to wade our way through them.”

“Can’t you just skip to the bit …” Fly trails off, “you know what I mean.”

“Got to find that bit first,” Clare says, eyes skimming over the text, “time doesn’t exactly move fluidly through the books.

I just read five pages about a potions lesson that went horribly wrong and then it skimmed by the next two weeks.

It’s like only the important – or interesting – events have been given in detail. ”

Fly sighs dramatically and I close my book, then close Clare’s.

“We have been at it for several hours. We should take a break.”

“I was at an interesting bit!” Clare protests.

“Really?” Fly says, tipping salt into his stew and stirring it around. “Interesting how? Did someone crack the spine of their book?”

Clare looks at him with horror, then shakes her head.

“I was reading up about the second trial that took place in your sister’s year. Did you know that someone got caught cheating?”

“No, she never mentioned that. The postal service back in Slate is pretty unreliable. Her letters came sporadically. I think some may have gone missing.” Fly and Clare both stare at me. “What?”

“Isn’t that sort of suspicious?” Clare says, taking off her glasses and buffing them with the sleeve of her cardigan.

An item of clothing Fly has threatened to burn, but she refuses to part with because it’s comfy.

I understand – I wouldn’t mind one for myself.

“It’s sort of odd your sister’s letters never reached you given what happened. ”

I want to smack myself on the forehead. Hard.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes! That is. Why the hell did I never think of that?” For a moment my spirits soar high – this is proof, proof something strange was going on. But then, just as quickly as they soar, my spirits plummet right back down as if they’ve been shot right out of the sky.

So what?

Knowing some of her letters went missing on their way to me provides me with no more actual information, no more actual insight.

It’s not like I can summon those letters to me.

It’s not like I’ll find them hidden under a floorboard in my room.

Or some mysterious stranger will present them to me.

Where ever those letters went, wherever they are, they’re long gone now and I can’t ever hope to land my hands on them.

The three of us are quiet for a moment, then Fly asks, “So what happened with the cheating?”

Clare flicks open the book to the page she was studying and runs her fingers down the text. “A kid from Onyx Quarter was caught helping another student – a student also from Onyx Quarter.”

“Why?” Fly snorts. “Like they don’t have enough of an advantage to begin with.”

“It doesn’t say. And the names of the individuals involved have been omitted. But they were severely punished.”

“Huh?” Fly snorts a second time. “Were they forced to eat in the canteen with the rest of us commoners?” He lifts his fork and lets the gloopy stew drip off the prongs.

“No,” Clare says, color draining from her face. “It doesn’t say what happened to the student who was helped, but the shadow weaver that helped them was banished from the realm. ”

Fly and I stare at Clare gobsmacked, and I’m certain the color drains right from my face too.

Banished. Not even expelled to one of the lesser Quarters. Or sent for a life of misery in Slate.

Banished from the realm. Which can mean only one thing. Certain death.

“Shit,” Fly says, “that’s … I thought the punishment meant you lost your points for that trial – that is …”

“There must have been more to it,” I say. “They wouldn’t banish someone from the realm simply for helping a friend.”

Clare skims her finger down the page. “That’s what it says here. I mean, I guess we have no idea if it’s accurate or truthful, but it’s so detailed in every other aspect, why make something like that up?”

“To scare us,” Fly says, finally giving up on the stew and dropping his fork onto his plate.

“Except nobody reads these books,” I say, “and even if they did, this detail is buried among many other events in hundreds and hundreds of pages.”

“I think Briony is right. I think the purpose of these books is to record what happens at the academy. All of it.”

“I wonder why they helped the other student like that,” I say.

“Sex,” Fly says. “Sex is always the reason for everything.”

“Or love,” Clare says, her eyes turning slightly dreamy. “That’s so romantic.”

“Or it could have been friendship,” I say. “If you needed my help, I would risk my neck for you.”

“You’d risk banishment?” Clare says, a wobble to her voice .

I shiver. “It wouldn’t be my first choice, but yes, yes, I would.”

Fly rests his elbow on the table and leans his chin on his hand. “Awww, Cupcake, you’re adorable. But no you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t let you.”

“Have you ever heard what it's like out there beyond the realm?” Clare asks. “Have the Princes ever spoken about it?”

I hesitate. Beaufort alluded to it in that argument we had, but he never went into details. “Not really.”

“My older brother’s been out there once on an assignment,” Fly says. “They were sent as backup to some shadow weavers who were disposing of demons attempting to break through the protective barriers.”

“And?” Clare says, her eyes wide with horror.

“He wouldn’t talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“He came back with third-degree burns all down his left arm. Burns the shadow weavers couldn’t heal. I take it he didn’t want to go over it. He wanted to forget about it.”

“Jeez,” Clare says.

“If it doesn’t tell you why the shadow weaver helped their friend in the trial,” I say, pointing back to Clare’s book, “does it tell you how they helped the other student? What did they do?”

“I’m not exactly sure. It’s written in a long-winded and complicated manner as if the writer is trying to avoid spitting out the truth. But I think,” she pushes her glasses up her nose, “they gave them some of their magic.”

“What?” Fly says, lowering his voice and leaning forward. “Is that even possible?”

Clare shrugs and lowers her voice in reply. “I’ve never heard of it before. ”

“Have you, Briony? Briony?”

I stare down at the table, the blood roaring in my ears.

I’m back in the maze, that wisp of shadow magic dancing before my eyes, protecting me from danger.

Is that what happened? Did a shadow weaver give me their magic?

And if they did, who the hell was it?

Clare takes her volume back to her room with her and I take all the others back to mine.

Fly complains about being ignored in favor of books so I stay up chatting with him a while before retreating back to my room.

I head straight for my closet, pull out the stone and bring it into bed with me, resting it in my lap as I pull the volumes from the library towards me.

The cracks have grown even longer during the day and the stone feels warmer than normal against my skin. I run my palm over its surface and it seems to reverberate.

That’s new.

I stare down at the volumes – at the thick ones from my sister’s year and the thin one from my own.

I flip open the cover of my own, cautious to see what lies within.

The account starts right when the last train – the one from Slate Quarter – arrived at the station and the last of the students filed out onto the platform.

It recounts the Empress’s speech and even the words of that asshole shadow weaver who stood on the pile of bags and threatened everyone.

Then it goes on to list what happened that night.

I skim over all the harrowing details of shadow weavers attacking other students – beating them, frying them, strangling them.

It doesn’t make easy reading. And Beaufort wondered why the hell I’d be resentful about his kind.

I keep skimming and then, to my utmost surprise, catch a glimpse of my own name. I retreat back up the text and find it again.

My encounter with Beaufort.

I stare at it in shock. I don’t know why, everyone else’s encounters are included – it’s just ours was so fleeting, such a passing nothing event. He didn’t hurt me. He barely spoke to me.

And yet, while other altercations are given a line at the most, our encounter is described in detail over one paragraph.

I frown, reading it again and again, reliving it as I do, unable to help but shiver.

There’s one sentence in particular that puzzles me, that I don’t understand.

The shadow weaver saw and that is why he pursued the girl from Slate Quarter .

What the hell does that mean? Saw what?

Are all our other encounters included in here? Are they included in as much detail? My cheeks burn as I flick through the pages, the stone warm in my lap.

I catch snippets of bits and pieces as I flip the pages. Stanley has been enjoying himself as far as I can see – sleeping with most of the girls from Iron Quarter already. Odessa has been up to all sorts with the Hardies. And it seems I’m also not the only one she’s been bullying.

I find my various encounters with Beaufort, even with Dray too, but – thank goodness – the book doesn’t go into as much detail as that first encounter. They are more just passing comments.

I’m about to put the book away for the evening, when another idea occurs to me.

I flick right to the back of the book, looking for the account of the maze trial.

Maybe it’ll give me information about who helped me in the maze.

I have to wade through a lot of information.

Several hundred students went through the trial and it gives at least some details about how each did.

I see Thorne Cadieux completed the maze the fastest – Beaufort and Dray not too far behind him.

I find details of Clare being whisked away by a tornado, Fly chased by that beast. And then finally I find myself.

I stare at the few words written about my ordeal in the maze. And then I stare some more.

It says I failed.

That’s all. Nothing more. Nothing about the brambles retreating. Nothing about Madame Bardin attacking me. Nothing about the wisp of a shadow.

Should I be surprised? The academy has its secrets and its cover-ups. Of course, there’d be no record of a teacher attacking a student.

I shake my head in disgust and run my finger over the deceptive words. As I do I feel the texture of the paper is different here. Holding the book up to the light, I peer in more closely. Something’s been altered. The words have been tampered with.