The Copper Gauntlet (21 page)

“And what is that?” asked Assemblyman Graves, looking as if he was reeling from innumerable shocks.

“The reason the tomb was destroyed is because of Call,” Jasper said.
Because Call is the Enemy of Death. Because Call is Constantine Madden reborn and just as Constantine destroyed the Magisterium, Call destroyed the tomb. Bind his magic; kill him
. Call stared in frozen horror as Jasper went on. “Call used void magic to keep back the Chaos-ridden. It got kind of out of control, because it was the first time he’d ever used it.” Jasper gave them all a smug look, like he knew how much they’d been panicking. “That’s right. Call is a Makar, like Aaron. Now we have two.”

Call let out a sigh of relief. The Assembly members were staring at Jasper as if he’d grown a second head.

Finally, for real, Jasper had surprised him.

At that moment, Anastasia Tarquin rose to her feet. Her back was straight, her silver hair glimmering. She stared directly at Call as she spoke. “The Enemy is dead at last,” she said. “Thanks to you five” — her hand swept out, indicating Call, Alastair, Tamara, Jasper, and Aaron — “Verity Torres and the many lost in the Cold Massacre have finally been avenged.”

Call thought of Verity’s head nailed to the door of the tomb and swallowed hard.

Mrs. Tarquin’s words seemed to snap Assemblyman Graves out of his shock. “Anastasia is right,” he declared. “The Treaty is rendered null. The Alkahest must be retrieved, but for the moment, this is a time of celebration. The war,” he said, “is over.”

The rest of the Assembly members began murmuring, smiles broadening across their faces. Master Milagros began to applaud, and it caught on wildfire-fast, the Assembly members and Masters rising to their feet to clap for them. Tamara looked surprised, Jasper smug, and Alastair relieved. Then Call looked over at Aaron. Aaron wasn’t grinning. He had an odd, conflicted expression on his face as though he was wondering, knowing what he knew about Call, if he was doing a terrible thing by hiding it.

But maybe Aaron wasn’t thinking that. Maybe he was exhausted and not thinking about anything at all.

A
FTER THAT, THINGS
happened quickly. Alastair was squired off by Master Rufus to sleep in a spare Master’s room. The kids were sent to their common rooms to bathe and rest, meaning that Call was a) separated from Jasper and b) reunited with Havoc, both of which he regarded as good things.

No sooner had Call, Tamara, and Aaron spilled back into their common room to collapse in exhaustion on sofas and chairs than Alex Strike arrived, bearing food from the Refectory — wooden plates and bowls piled high with different sorts of mushrooms and lichen and tuberous puddings, from stuff that tasted like nachos to purple goop that Tamara thought resembled salted caramel to a mushroom that tasted exactly like a breaded chicken finger.

After eating his fill, Call stumbled to his bed and collapsed, exhausted. He didn’t dream — or if he did, he didn’t remember.

When he woke up the next day, he realized that his sheets were gritty with smoke and dirt. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a real bath and decided he’d better take one before Master Rufus got a good look at him and dunked him in one of the Magisterium’s silty pools.

Looking down at Havoc, he realized his wolf was in even worse shape. Havoc’s fur had turned an entirely different color from filth.

The washroom was a grotto off the main hallway and shared by two different rooms of apprentices. It had three chambers — one with toilets, one with sinks and mirrors, and one with warm pools that bubbled gently and streams of water that poured down over you like warm rain if you stood in the right place. Walls of rock cleverly separated all of the individual bathing areas, so that multiple people could bathe at the same time without having to see one another with their clothes off.

Call went over to one of the pools, hung his towel on a hook, stripped off the filthy civilian clothes he’d fallen asleep in and climbed in. The water was so hot it was almost uncomfortable at first, until his muscles relaxed. Then it felt amazing. Even his leg felt good.

“Come on in,” he told Havoc.

The wolf hesitated, sniffing the air. Then he took a suspicious lick of the water. Once, this would have annoyed Call, but now he found the idea that Havoc didn’t automatically do what he wanted to be a huge relief.

“Call?” he heard someone say. It was a voice coming from the other side of the rock wall of his bath. A very familiar girl’s voice.

“Tamara?” His voice went a little squeaky. “I’m taking a bath!”

“I know,” she said. “But there’s no one else in here and we need to talk.”

“I don’t know if you know this,” he said. “But mostly people take baths with their clothes
off
.”

“I’m on the other side of a wall!” she said, sounding exasperated. “And it’s really humid in here and making my hair frizz, so could we just talk?”

Call pushed his own wet black hair out of his face. “Okay, fine. Talk.”

“You called me a liar,” she said, and the hurt in her voice was unmistakable.

Call squirmed. Havoc looked at him sternly. “I know,” he said.

“And then it turned out that you were an even bigger liar,” she said. “You lied about everything.”

“I lied to protect my dad!”

“You lied to protect yourself,” she snapped. “You could have told us you were the Enemy —”

“Tamara,
shut up.”

“Call, I hate to tell you this, but the bathroom is not exactly full of people listening in. It’s just us.”

“I’m not the Enemy of Death.” Call glowered at his reflection in the water. Black hair, gray eyes. Still Callum Hunt. And yet not.

“You could have told us the truth about what Master Joseph said to you, and you didn’t.”

“I didn’t want you to hate me,” Call said. “You’re my best friend.”

Tamara made a dubious noise. “Aaron’s your best friend,
liar
.”

“You’re my best girl friend,” said Call. “I didn’t want either of you to hate me. I need you both.”

When Tamara spoke again, she sounded less angry. “So I guess what I wanted to tell you is that I don’t want us ever to lie to each other again.”

“But we can still lie to other people?” Call looked at Havoc, who wiggled his ears.

“If it’s important,” Tamara said. “But not to each other and not to Aaron. We only tell each other the truth. Okay?”

“Okay,” Call said, and Havoc barked.

“Call,” said Tamara. “Is there someone in the bathtub with you?”

Call sighed. He hadn’t expected his truth telling to bite him back so quickly. “Havoc,” he admitted.

“Call!” Tamara said. “That is
so disgusting.”

Then she started to laugh. After a second, Call was laughing, too.

Once Tamara left and Call finished up his bath, he headed back to his room in his robe and pulled on a uniform. When he reemerged, Aaron was already there, clean, dressed, and eating what looked like a very pale pear.

“What
is
that?” Call asked him.

Aaron shrugged. “Magic cave fruit. One of the Silver Year apprentice groups grew it. Tastes a little like cheese, but also like an apple. Want one?”

Call made a face. Behind Aaron, he saw that their table had a big pile of the weird fruit, some drinks and candy from the Gallery, and what looked like a few homemade cards. A single eyeless fish floated in a glass bowl.

Aaron followed his gaze. “Yeah, some people were worried about us. Those are ‘get well’ presents, I guess.”

“ ‘Get back here’ presents,” Call said.

Aaron grinned. A few minutes later, Tamara came out of her room. Her hair wasn’t frizzed at all: It was in smooth dark braids, and she’d put them up around her head like a crown. Gold earrings hung from her ears, swinging when she moved. She smiled at Call and when she did, he felt his gut twist. He looked away quickly, without quite knowing why.

“Ready to go to the Refectory?” she asked them.

Aaron took a last bite of the magic cave fruit, folding the core in half and eating it. He glanced down at Havoc, fluffy from the bath. He smelled a little bit like green-tea soap and looked unhappy about it.

“Hey, puffball,” he said.

The Chaos-ridden wolf, striker of terror into the hearts of Iron Year students, looked up with swirling, chagrined eyes. Call reached down to pat his head.

“We’ll get you some sausages in the Refectory,” he promised. “You deserve to celebrate, too.”

They headed out into the hallway, only to find Jasper there waiting for them.

“Uh, hi,” Jasper said. “I was just about to knock on your door. Everyone in my apprentice group is being super weird and staring at me. I mean,” he added, “I am a hero, so I can see how that would be awkward for them.”

“You’re definitely something,” said Aaron.

Jasper shrugged. “Anyway, I didn’t want to go to the Refectory by myself.”

He fell into step with them as they made their way down the hall, chatting to Tamara. It had actually started to feel like Jasper just belonged with them, which seemed like a bad sign to Call. On the other hand, he couldn’t be mean to Jasper when Jasper was, against all odds, keeping his secret.

But sometimes Jasper cut his gaze over and Call wondered if the secret would get too tempting. If Call annoyed him — and Call was absolutely sure that he would eventually annoy Jasper, just as he was sure that Jasper was likely to annoy him — could Jasper continue to keep his mouth shut? If he was trying to impress another student, could he really resist temptation?

Call swallowed down the cold lump in his throat. “You’re not going to tell anyone, right?”

“Tell anyone what?” Jasper asked with a half smile.

There was no way Call was going to say it out loud. “The thing!”

Jasper raised an eyebrow. “So long as it continues to benefit me.”

“We need to agree,” Tamara said firmly. “No one says anything about Call. We don’t know who we can trust around here.”

Jasper didn’t answer her, and there was no way to make him, no way to extort a promise, and even if they were able to make him promise, no reason to believe he would keep his word.

Call was practically in a panic when they arrived in the Refectory. They were late, so it was already full. Smells of grilled onions and barbecue sauce filled the air, although kids were carrying plates piled high with grayish puddings, lichen, and mushrooms. Call’s mouth began to water despite his having just eaten.

After the first few apprentices spotted them, words were murmured and everyone’s heads went up. The whole Refectory fell silent. Call, Tamara, Aaron, and Jasper stood awkwardly in the doorway, feeling the weight of hundreds of eyes on them. People they knew, people they didn’t.
Everyone
was staring.

Then the room exploded into applause. Students Call didn’t recognize at all were whistling and clapping and standing up on their chairs, chanting and yelling that the war was over.

Master Rufus climbed atop the Masters’ table, looming over them all. He clapped his hands together and an instant silence fell — students were still moving their mouths, still applauding, but nothing was audible but Master Rufus.

“Today we welcome back to the Magisterium four students who have achieved an almost unprecedented victory in the history of the Assembly,” he said. “Jasper deWinter; Tamara Rajavi; our Makar, Aaron Stewart; and our
newest
chaos magician, Callum Hunt. Please welcome them back.”

The silence spell dissipated just long enough for a deafening roar of applause to sweep through the room.

“The Enemy of Death, he who sought to make himself and his minions immortal, he who would have defeated death itself, has now met death. We have not one but two Makars in this generation of mages. Every student here has contributed in some small way to this. We are truly lucky.”

People whistled and clapped. Across the room, Alex Strike winked at Call from under the fall of his messy brown hair.

“Now, we should remember that while the war is over, we have not yet achieved peace. The Enemy might be gone, but his minions remain. There are battles yet to be fought, and as mages of the Magisterium, it will be your job to fight them.”

This time there was a much more subdued murmur of applause. Good.

Master Rufus is right
, Call thought grimly.
Even more right than he knows
.

“Now. Call, Tamara, Aaron, and Jasper,” said Rufus, turning toward the four of them. “Raise your wristbands. In them you will find a new stone, a tanzanite, representing the greatest of victories achieved in the cause of the Magisterium.”

Call jerked his wrist up and stared. It was true. There was a purple-blue stone glimmering on his wrist. Beside it was another new stone. A black stone, representing his new status as a Makar, a user of chaos magic.

Jasper pumped his fist skyward and whooped. Suddenly, the room was full of people shouting: “
The Enemy is dead! The Enemy is dead!
”

Only Tamara and Aaron didn’t chant along with them. They looked at Call — Tamara with worry and Aaron with disquiet. They, Jasper, and Alastair were the only ones who knew, Call thought. The Enemy of Death was no more dead than he’d been before. You couldn’t kill a monster when you were that monster.

Rufus lowered his hands, a gesture that seemed to unlock the students from their places. Everyone started running toward Call and his friends, pelting them with claps on the back and questions about the Enemy and the battle. Call whirled around in a sea of bodies, trying to keep his balance. Kimiya was hugging Tamara and crying. Alex was shaking Aaron’s hand. And then Celia was in front of Call, her eyes rimmed with red, reaching for his arm. Relieved, he turned toward her, thinking that at least she would be normal.

Moments before she planted a massive kiss right on his mouth.

Call’s eyes went wide. Hers were closed as she leaned into him. They stood like that for a moment. Call was aware that people were staring at them — Tamara looking shocked, and Aaron, standing near her, started to laugh. Call was pretty sure Aaron was laughing at the fact that Call, having no idea where to put his hands, was waving his arms around like a squid underwater.

Finally, Celia pulled back. “You’re a hero,” she said, her eyes shining. “I always knew it.”