I should have known I couldn’t get to her that easily.
Her panoply flared, a sick-making feeling of power emptying out of her like water draining from a broken barrel. Maya didn’t even feel her impact with the earth.
*
When she came to, the late afternoon sun was slanting through the trees, and the world looked as though it had been dipped in gold.
Maya lay with her head pillowed in Jaedia’s lap. Her mentor had one hand tangled in her hair, idly letting it run through her fingers like strands of crimson resilk. Maya’s body ached from the drain of the panoply, but for an instant she felt utterly at peace, the summer sun pleasantly warm on her skin. She kept her eyes closed, hoping to prolong the moment.
“I can tell you’re awake, you know,” Jaedia said.
Maya sighed and opened her eyes, finding her mentor staring at her upside down. She grinned.
“I still can’t keep up with you,” Maya said.
“You’re getting better,” Jaedia said. “It was a good trick, laying traps for me.”
“You always prefer to dodge instead of block,” Maya said. “So I thought I wouldn’t give you the chance.”
“Try to disguise it a little better next time.” Jaedia tapped her lightly on the forehead. “And don’t forget that just because someone doesn’t like a particular style doesn’t mean they can’t use it.”
Maya nodded. Jaedia stared at her for a while, eyes distant, then shook her head.
“What’s wrong?” Maya said.
“Just … thinking. About what I said earlier.” Her lip quirked. “How do you feel about getting your cognomen?”
Maya swallowed. The question had a special meaning among the Order. Ordinary people might have their final name bestowed by their friends, their families, or even their enemies, but it was different for centarchs. The Council assigned them, based on the nature of an agathios’s powers and their standing with their colleagues. When a centarch died, their name would be given to another, a signal of the expectations the Order placed on the new recruit. Jaedia’s cognomen, Suddenstorm, was an ancient one of honorable lineage.
When an agathios was granted a cognomen, they were accepted as an equal among the centarchs. Save for the twelve Kyriliarchs of the Council, no centarch stood above or below another, and each was free to carry out the mission of the Order as they saw fit.
I’m ready. Maya fought down her excitement. Aloud, she said, “I’m … not sure.”
“I’ve kept you away from the Forge as much as I can.” Jaedia’s attention seemed to be far away. “I thought it would help keep you from being dragged into … politics.” She pronounced the word like it was something foul. “Sometimes I wonder if I’ve really done you a favor.”
“Of course you have,” Maya said. She sat up, rolling over to face Jaedia. “I’d much rather be out here helping people than shut up in the Forge debating doctrine with a bunch of stuffy old scholars.”
Jaedia laughed. “Of course you would. But you’re going to have to know how to navigate those waters, sooner or later. I’m hardly the one to teach you, unfortunately.” She sighed. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about your stunt with Hollis. Clearly there are some lessons still to be learned.”
Maya cast her eyes down. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s a start.” Jaedia clapped her on the shoulder and yawned. “Now, get up, my lazy student, or I’ll be the one falling asleep next.”
Maya climbed to her feet, wincing at protests from sore muscles. She followed Jaedia back to the cart, where the loadbirds had settled down for a nap, tiny heads tucked under their wings. Marn was napping too, sprawled in the cart atop the lumpy tarp that wrapped their gear. Jaedia left Maya to prod the boy awake while she hitched up the birds.
“Marn.”
“Muh?” he said, opening one eye.
“What did Math-Eth-Avra say to the Council of Nine?”
“What?” The boy sat up, blinking. “You made that up.”
“Chapter seven. That’s what you were reading, weren’t you?”
“Course.” His face screwed up in thought. “Something about … being doomed?”
Maya rolled her eyes. “Better hope Jaedia doesn’t quiz you.”
He scrabbled among the packs and rolled tents for his copy of the Inheritance, and Maya rather smugly pulled herself back onto the bench beside Jaedia. The birds clucked softly until Jaedia whistled them into obedience, and they lurched down the overgrown forest track.
As the sun went down, the shadows grew longer, until only broken fragments of light were visible between the trees. The track got rougher and rougher, little better than a game trail. The darkening forest closed in around them, trees pressing tight on every side. Jaedia lit a sunlamp with a touch to her haken, and in its brilliant, bouncing light branches seemed to shift and reach like stretching limbs. Maya ducked under one that hung low enough to scrape the cart, and giggled as Marn, less observant, got a face full of leaves.
Up ahead, the light from the sunlamp outlined the edges of a rocky outcrop, with a few scraggly trees clinging to the top. It looked ordinary enough, but Maya could feel the power flowing under the little hillock. Jaedia touched her haken again, sending a silent command Maya could see as darting wisp of golden light. Part of the rock face slid smoothly aside, shedding a handful of dirt. Within the hill, more sunlamps woke gradually, as though a new day were dawning underground. The loadbirds balked briefly at the threshold, misliking the ancient, musty smell, but Jaedia coaxed them forward with a whistle and a flip of the reins.
There wasn’t much to the secret space, just a square room, the walls and floor of flat white unmetal, covered with dirty footprints and wheel tracks from previous visitors. Opposite the hidden entrance was a freestanding arch, tall enough for a warbird to ride through and wider than their wagon. It was made of hundreds of thin strands twisted round and round, like a rope woven from spiderweb. At its base it was as thick as a wagon wheel, but it narrowed as it climbed, until at the apex the arch was completed by a fragile-looking thread no bigger than Maya’s little finger.
The fragility was an illusion, of course. It was made of some variety of unmetal, like most Chosen arcana, and thus invulnerable to anything short of a direct assault with deiat. This room had been here for at least four hundred years, and unless a mad centarch took it into their head to destroy it, it would exist unchanged for a thousand more. The archway was a Gate, the most important surviving arcana after the haken themselves.
Jaedia twisted in her seat and sent a command to the outer door, which slid closed as noiselessly as it had opened. The loadbirds stamped uneasily.
“Maya?” Jaedia said. “Would you do the honors?”
Maya took a deep breath and nodded. In her mind’s eye, she composed the sequence that would wake the Gate, a brief command followed by a code telling it where she wanted to go. There were seventy-nine known Gates, both inside the Dawn Republic and beyond its borders, though the Council had deemed some too dangerous to use. When she was certain she had it right, Maya touched her haken and sent the command sequence into the arcana. It reached back to her, a questing tendril that latched onto her connection to deiat and began to draw power, like a thirsty taproot reaching a pond. A brief chill spread through her body, dissipating as her power replenished itself. The space under the arch filled from the top down with shimmering quicksilver, like a mercurial curtain falling. When it reached the ground, the ancient arcana sent back the code that meant it was ready.