CHAPTER 5

In Which the Bells Ring Again

ANGIE. TIME TO GET TO CLASS.

That wasn’t fair. Despite starting to feel (even more) agitated as a result of her Timely Arrival charm, Angie turned. Chris had turned away and back toward the crowd, which was starting to disperse, though in most cases lingeringly. He shrugged and waved at them in a manner that was somehow apologetic, and then sort of swept his hand in a manner that conveyed “Go on now,” without making it seem like he was dismissing them or shooing them away like mischievous cats. Angie had no idea how he did that.

Chris then turned in the direction of the gym and performance building, and saw Angie looking at him.

“Gramyre,” Angie said. “When you see her, bring up your birthday. If I understand what the birds told me, that’ll get a reaction. Even if we had time I doubt I could explain, but I think you should do that.”

Chris looked baffled. “My birthday. Okay? I guess I can do that… A good reaction?”

“Yeah,” Angie said.

“So it wasn’t her…” Chris said musingly.

“Königsmann or Mishra?” Angie asked.

Chris took a moment to process that, then said, “When my birthday came up in passing, Katie Königsmann seemed briefly… alarmed? I’m not sure. And then the rest of the party she seemed to be in a more sour mood than before. It struck me as odd at the time, but I didn’t want to probe when she denied that anything was bothering her. I don’t think my birthday’s come up around Beth Mishra.”

“Yeah,” Angie said. “To be clear, the She I’m talking about is not Beth. No idea what Beth’s reaction would be, though it would also probably be obvious.” As she turned back toward the Tower, she said, “She’ll be hard to miss. We gotta get to class. See you later.”

“Yeah,” Chris said, sounding rather bemused. “You certainly will.”

As Angie headed toward the Tower, she mentally pulled what she thought of as her mantle across her face and the way she moved. When she wore the mantle, she imagined herself as a living bonfire, implacably moving to where she needed to go, and that anyone so foolish as to get in her way or otherwise mess with her would be scorched to the bone. She wasn’t entirely sure what this made her look like as she moved through the world, but even absent the boys, the attitude had served her well in warding off those who looked like they might be inclined to make her life more miserable. It continued to work, maybe better than ever.

She wasn’t sure where the boys had ended up—they might still be off to her left toward the south side of campus, but she didn’t bother to look. There were still a lot of people over there, so Angie didn’t expect to manage to see anyone. Even Evan, as tall as he was, would be hard to spot in the crowd.

Angie swept across the quad and into the doors to the tower. Inside, another set of doors stood immediately in front of her, the hallway to her left and right curving out of sight. She strode straight through the doors across from her, into and through a hallway that stretched a dozenish meters through a space between two classrooms and ended in a large circular stairwell, with wrought iron and brass stairs spiraling up into the tower.

Angie continued striding up the stairs to the third floor, hung a left, and headed to the second door, a quarter of the way around the small circular landing. Behind her, the spiral staircase ascended further up the tower, where the serious magic happened. (There are reasons wizards and lesser magi do their work in the tallest towers possible, many of which overlap with the reasons those towers are built with thick stone walls and thin(ner) wood roofs.)

She pushed through the doorway with a few minutes to spare. Through the door she found a five-tiered, amphitheater-style classroom with a whole five people in it, including herself and a woman with a big wavy mane of steel-hued hair who was obviously the instructor. This woman was already looking at the door by the time Angie opened it all the way, a look of relief on her face.

The tiers narrowed from front to back: the back row had a single work desk, the next down three, the next five, the second from last seven, and the bottom row eleven. There was one desk on the other side of the entrance from the rest—Angie took a seat there.

This left her with a couple of minutes to take in her few classmates. The instructor’s face, after about twenty seconds of relief, shifted to poorly masked irritation as no more students entered the room. The other three students, all sitting in the front row, were taking Angie in with considerably more interest than her own.

Angie recognized them all, for various reasons.

One, sitting at the far end with several seats between him and the others, was Austyn St. Gwenffrewi, a pale brunette boy. Austyn had gone to Asphodel with the Exiles and had seemed like a natural fit for someone who might reject the whole exile deal and treat them as fellow nerds. But no, Austyn had almost zealously ignored them for all of middle school, and thus he could go to hell. He was supposed to be some sort of alchemy prodigy. Angie wouldn’t know, as he’d never talked to her. She gave him a cold look, and he immediately looked away rather than meet her eyes.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The second, in the center seat, was a tiny auburn haired girl. Angie doubted she was any larger than Katier Ryuyama, though it was hard to tell while she was sitting. The girl wore her hair in an elaborate braid, hanging down on the right side of her head, long enough that even in the braid it ended just below her armpits. She looked like she thought she was applying for an internship, wearing expensive looking black slacks, a light gray blazer, and a deep scoop-neck dark blouse that was tasteful enough, considering. Her identity, Angie was sure, was Circe Pendergast, daughter of Elena Pendergast, one of the members of Seattle’s Executive Council. Angie had seen pictures of them together, and the resemblance was not just obvious, but uncanny.

The third, sitting with a desk between him and Circe… She knew him thanks to Ryan’s general obsession with learning about their present and future classmates over the past three years, a hobby with a touch of vicarious living to it. Ardath Osterly, of the K’n Zonti[1] Osterlys. With his pale green skin, stark white hair, and unusual yet compelling facial features[2], he was, according to Ryan, one of a handful of the most popular kids in their class from Arcadia Middle School.

[1] One of the many kingdoms making up the Hundred Thousand Islands of Lemuria, a vast sea full of islands of strange people and creatures. Lemuria can be entered by crossing over the boundary of a stationary circle a little more than two miles in diameter southwest of a small, uninhabited island south of India, the borders of which serve as a portal to the Lemuric Ocean, approximately 10,000km across, with approximately one island per 1,000 sq km. It is believed there are over 5,000 distinct polities, only approximately 2,000 of which have yet been contacted by explorers from the World Between.

[2] There are many ethnicities of Lemurics, none of which particularly resemble any known ethnicities of the ‘eight’ continents.

More importantly to Angie, though, was that he utterly blew chunks, because being an Osterly meant he had a third eye. He just had one. Ardath Osterly wouldn’t have to serve a spirit for a year and a day, or sell the memory of his first Solstice, or indenture his first born to an elf, or sacrifice seven ounces of mithriled silver, or whatever, in exchange for being able to see the aetherial. He could just open his natural third eye and check out what was happening with the aether.

Ardath returned Angie’s regard with an intense one of his own, and then said, “Well you had an eventful morning didn’t you? I’m Ardath Osterly. I presume you are Angie McMillan?” He’d probably get a lot of folks twitterpated with that, but he had both a boyfriend and a girlfriend, and Angie had a boyfriend, so she didn’t care.

Angie nodded. “That’s me. We know who you are, Osterly. Why would you think we didn’t?”

“We being the Exiles?” he asked, too casually, not put off by her prickliness.

Circe gave him an appalled look. “Ardath,” she hissed, “We do not talk about the E word around adults!”

Despite her low pitch, the words carried. The instructor, who’d been watching the door pensively, started to turn toward Ardath and Circe, but then two more students burst through the door, bringing the total number of students up to six so far. The new students, out of breath, looked like freshmen at first glance, and took seats in the front row, confirming that impression.

One was an angular girl, with medium brown skin, blonde hair, odd looking eyes, and a real beak of a nose, and Angie knew from noses. She wore a long, fitted t-shirt with… with her own face on it… and shorts so short they were nearly hidden by the t-shirt. Michi Y’sh, who had gone to Asphodel, was so weird.

The other, a boy, had also gone to Asphodel, but he’d certainly never talked to the Exiles and wasn’t interesting enough to be worth considering further at the moment, other than his surprising presence in a magical arts class.

After a little more relief, the instructor then turned and said, “Would you mind elaborating on what you just said, Mst. Pendergast?”

A look of panic crossed Circe’s face. Before she could respond, Ardath said, “Oh relax. They showed up at school with O’Sadie, which means whatever the whole thing was truly about it seems to be over.”

“I’m not really up for discussing my morning or my past with strangers,” Angie said as she started getting her things out. She left the notepad computer in her bag—it wouldn’t be used in this class. “If it’s all the same, I’d rather they not either.” The instructor nodded in acceptance.

“Sure,” Ardath said. “Seemed eventful, especially with the auguries. I could see you needing time.”

The instructor’s eyes widened. “Auguries?”

“Magpies,” Angie said. “I’m a crittertongue, so it was stressful. Birds are rude.”

“So I have heard,” she said mildly. “I would love discussing them later, if you’re so inclined.”

Angie suppressed a sigh and said, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. I don’t suppose it could count as bonus points for my placement test, could it?”

The instructor did not suppress her sigh. “I’m afraid not. Like I told your mother, Mst. McMillan, there’s nothing I can do. Unfortunately, the ‘ghost wizard,’ as you put it in your written complaint, is still very much the guiding star followed by his great-grandchildren, and one of them is the head of Persephone’s magical arts department. I’m afraid you’re stuck here, despite the fact that I agree with you about the questions in question, both the theory and the unnecessary history questions. My hands are tied.”

At this point the bell started ringing

BRONG

BRONG

BRONG

BRONG

BABONG

indicating that it was time for class to truly begin.