Prig let go of my arm as he stepped beside me to talk to Deko.
I have always had trouble letting go of my anger. It boils inside of me for days and there is no quashing it save for violence or sex. Or sometimes violent sex. But when I was younger I only knew about the violence.
Prig started talking but I couldn't hear him over the rush of blood in my veins. I hated the fucker. I hated all of them, but I hated him so fucking much! For everything he had done to me, all the pain and humiliation. For everything he had done to Josef just for knowing me. For everything he was going to do to Isen just to bloody well get to me. I hated Prig and I wanted to see him hurt. I wanted to see him bleed. I wanted to see him die!
"I am the weapon," the words hissed from my mouth. I reached for the shard of mirror hidden in my bandages, tore it free, and stabbed it into Prig's fat fucking neck.
Prig screamed and I saw blood wash over my hand. All around me Deko's people were moving, some protecting him while others moved towards me. A whirlwind of chaos and violence all moving in slow motion with me at its centre. I saw Prig's fist coming, but I didn't have time to dodge it. He punched me in the face and the world went black.
Chapter 10
Induction into the Orran Academy of Magic was the worst time of my life. It only lasted a month, but that month was worse than all my time in the Pit. Worse than my stay in the Red Cells underneath Terrelan's capital city of Juntorrow. Worse than the birth of my second child, Sirileth, the Monster.
Josef and I were inseparable. The tutors at the academy tried, of course, but I have long since discovered it is quite difficult to control a pair of wilful children. Each night they separated us into our dorms and each night one of us would slip out and find the other. Come the morning, they would find us huddled together in one of the bunk beds. This was before they decided to embrace and nurture the relationship. We were always stronger together than apart.
The first few days of induction were not too harrowing. We were introduced to the others who would be in our classes: Lesray Alderson, who I later gave the incredibly clever nickname of bitch-whore, Tammy Oppen, and Barrow Laney. It was not a large induction by any means, and of the five of us, only myself, Josef, and Lesray were deemed to be powerful enough to be suited to war. We were shown around the academy, both the places we were allowed to go and those that were off limits to students. I remember taking note of every door we were told never to open, and I opened almost all of them, and a few they thought well-hidden even from curious children.
We were fed, three meals a day and good food. It was the best I had ever eaten in my young life, and probably better than I eventually ate as a queen. They tested us with our numbers and letters. At the time, I could do simple mathematics, but my parents hadn't thought to teach me what little they knew of letters, there simply wasn't a need for it in our little forest village. Only the elders and merchants had need of reading, and the young daughter of a basket weaver was never intended to be either of those. Josef had a better grasp of both reading and writing, but he was also two years my senior. Still, I remember being a little jealous of him for his ability to make sense out of pages and ink.
I believe it was our third day into induction, just our fourth day at the academy, when the tutors began testing us. Sources are dangerous things to anyone not attuned to the magic they contain. Even after half a lifetime of research I still do not know what affects specific attunements. Even the diviners, those whose sole task it is to find potential Sourcerers, do not know the secrets. I'm certain neither of my parents were attuned to even a single Source and yet there I was, able to wield five at once. Perhaps the Rand know, or even the Djinn, but it's fair to say neither of them will be sharing any more of their secrets with me. I don't just burn bridges, I scorch their foundations and set the water on fire as well.
For young students at the academy the only way to test attunement was with time, pain, and lots of Spiceweed. Trial and error, they called it. I call it fucking torture, and I've experienced enough of it to be a bloody expert on the subject. I suppose I should be thankful they used small Sources, those no larger than a marble, to test us.
The pain brought on by ingesting a Source you're not attuned with is... Well, it's bloody horrible. Within the first minute, the cramps start. They begin in the stomach, but spread outward, muscles tensing, tendons contracting. They get more severe as it goes on as well. So painful... Nothing else I have ever experienced has come close and I have suffered a great many types of torture. After a couple of minutes vision starts to dim and something tears inside. I am no student of physiology, the Biomancy arts are as foreign to me as the more mundane surgeries, but I believe it is considered a bad thing when people start bleeding from their eyes, ears, and nose.
If the incompatible Source is not regurgitated within a few minutes the Sourcerer will die painfully, and messily. Despite the rather terminal outcome of using an incompatible Source, it remains the only way to test a Sourcerer for their attunement.
One by one, Josef and I were made to ingest a Source and we were monitored for the reaction. As soon as we started to cramp, Spiceweed was administered. The weed might have saved my life time and time again, but it is not without its drawbacks. It feels like vomiting up everything you've eaten in the past week, and the retching doesn't stop just because you're empty. Some people have it worse than others, and I have always been one of the former, though I wish it were otherwise.
Pyromancy was the third Source the tutors at the Orran Academy of Magic tested me with. I had already failed my first two attunements, both Geomancy and Meteomancy, and I remember the trepidation I felt on that third day. People can be trained just like any animal and I had already come to expect the discomfort from swallowing down a Source, the feeling of something hard sticking in my throat on the way down. Then the agony would start, the cramps moving from the gut out toward my limbs, my muscles screaming in pain. It never got any further than that, the moment I showed signs of rejection Tutor Luen would rush forwards with Spiceweed and shove into my mouth. After just two failed attunements I had already come to expect failure, and the consequences scared me shitless.
The tutors never told us what attunement or rejection really meant back then. They never told us it was out of our hands. I had failed twice and I thought it was my fault. I thought I had done something wrong or not tried hard enough. I was terrified of what would happen if I showed no attunements. Just six years old, torn away from my family and forced to swallow shards of magic that hurt on the way down almost as much as on the way back up. Worst was the thought that they might kick me out if I failed too many times; the uncertainty of what I would do, how I would survive on my own was terrifying. Josef stood by me as much as he could, even so early on in our friendship, but he was also going through attunement. Though it didn't affect him as badly as it did me, he was also suffering.
I remember the feeling after swallowing the Pyromancy Source. I winced, expecting the worst. Tutor Luen moved towards me, a small clump of dried Spiceweed in hand. A Sourcerer can use any Source, any magic, but if they lack attunement it will hurt them, kill them much faster. With the Geomancy Source I felt connected to the ground beneath my feet. I could feel the composition of the earth. I didn't even understand it, but I could feel the lines of power in the earth. Right up until the rejection started and then all I could feel was agony. With the Meteomancy Source I could tell rain was coming even though it was hours away. The Pyromancy Source was different. It felt like a fire had been lit inside my body, but it didn't burn me. It warmed me through. I could have stripped naked and bathed in ice water and not felt the cold. I've done just that since, and I can tell you it's quite refreshing. There are tribes of terrans in the far north who insist it is excellent for the skin and for good health, though few of them can use Pyromancy to keep them warm through the soaking.