Weeks went by, and nothing.
No one else had seen the Tower like I had. Nothing leapt up to threaten me or Julian. I went to class, to Div Club, to the library. I fought methodically to think myself past my CM doubts, and made a little progress.
College. Nothing strange about it.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop made my temper short. Arriving at Hurst one Monday halfway through October, I snarled, “Papers can bite my ass,” and dropped my bag with an unceremonious thump.
Robert eyed me from his usual sprawl in his chair. “You’re in an uncommonly good mood, I see.”
Julian was also watching me warily. No doubt he could feel the waves of irritation coming off me. Everyone in the dining hall probably could. “Did your meeting with Sheffield not go well?” he asked.
“It went fine. I just don’t want to write the damn thing.”
“Ah,” Robert said, understanding. “The infamous History 205 paper. First Manifestation: discuss.”
“In fifteen to twenty pages,” Julian added.
Exactly. I had to summarize the various theories for the cause of First Manifestation, with arguments for and against. “And add my own opinion on the matter, too. Has nobody pointed out to him that people write their dissertations on that question?”
“Frequently.” Robert shrugged and passed me the salt. “Ally yourself with Medapati; she’s the safe choice. Some variety of radiation, unmonitored at the time, which triggered the heretofore inactive genes in that portion of the population which possessed them in sufficient quantity for expression.”
He was quoting our textbook, almost word for word. Three-quarters of my classmates would do the same thing in their papers; most of the rest would paraphrase the physicist’s own article, instead. But I frowned at my chicken nuggets. “If I have to write this thing, I’d rather pick something interesting to say.”
“Sheffield will love you if you do,” Julian said. “How many Medapati papers do you think he sees every year?”
I began placing nuggets on my tray, thinking out loud. “Religious explanations. Evangelical Christians trying to shoehorn it into their eschatology, Buddhists claiming half the planet achieved a degree of enlightenment at the same time, Wiccans crowing they were right all along.”
Robert showed what he thought of that by swiping and eating the “religion” nugget. “Conspiracy and terrorism,” he said, gesturing at one in another corner of the tray. “Biological warfare, or a chemical agent, or radiation attack. But everyone who claimed responsibility has been proved a crackpot.” He looked disappointed when I ate that one myself.
“A newly-restored connection to the Otherworld,” Julian said. “But we cut back on using iron after First Manifestation, not before.”
I gave him an opening, but he showed no interest in stealing my food. I nibbled on the chicken myself, thinking. “So that brings me to cousins of Medapati’s theory—like fluctuations in the earth’s magnetic field, only we were monitoring that, and the data shows no change.” No wonder so many people went with the easy choice. “Peprah?”
Robert looked dubious. “Not very scientific.”
“Not something we have a good scientific model for at present,” I corrected him. “But the advent of gifts made us rejigger a lot of theories anyway. Peprah could work if you accept the stories about Welton—that he showed faint psychic abilities before First Manifestation. That all wilders did.”
“And that somehow they called forth the full ability in themselves and everyone else? Without knowing they did so? You haven’t convinced me, my lady, and I doubt you will convince Sheffield.”
“Wilders believe it,” Julian said quietly. “Not Peprah’s whole theory—but about Welton, yes.”
A quick glance at Robert told me that was news to him, too. “I don’t suppose it’s written down anywhere I could cite?” Julian’s mouth curled in amusement, and he shook his head. “Damn. Well, I may do it anyway, if only to give myself a treat for slogging through all the summary and evaluation. What about you guys? How’s your golem going, Robert?”
He looked chagrined. “Well enough, but the class was not what I’d hoped.”
“By which he means,” Julian said, “that golems are harder than he thought, and it’ll take more than one term to make anything complicated.”
His roommate conceded it with good grace. “Indeed. So far, I have built a construct to sort candy by color. Cower before my might!”
I laughed. “What about you, Julian?”
No immediate answer. The humor went out of Robert’s mobile face like somebody had pulled the plug. “He, being a damned fool, will stake himself out for Grayson.”
Combat shielding again. I shot Julian a worried look, which he ignored. “Please tell me that’s a joke.”
“Not in the slightest,” Robert said grimly.
“It makes sense,” Julian countered. The very lack of expression in his voice told me how bad it was. “How else is she going to measure our skill? You can’t evaluate a shield by looking at it. You have to test it.”
“To destruction,” his roommate snapped.
“Exactly.”
“To hell with that. An undergraduate should not be in a class where his final exam includes being hit when his shields fail—and you know they will. No matter what you think, Grayson is better than you. And she won’t be protecting you this time.”
“She’s not putting shields on you?” I stared at Julian, appalled.
“No,” Robert growled. “She’s not. Because, and I quote this bloody idiot, ‘We get complacent when she does. We’ve got to rely on our own strength.’”
And she’d barred Julian from using his power reservoir in class, on the legitimate grounds—or so he’d argued at the time—that he couldn’t rely on access to it in a crisis. I hadn’t liked the notion then, but at least he’d been able to draw on it for practice, which was probably the only reason he’d made it this far. Now he would face her with nothing but what remained of his own strength? It was madness. And the way Julian avoided our gazes said he knew it. “Julian, you can’t do this. You’re only an undergrad. She can’t do that to you.”
“I signed the waiver.”
Shock hit me like a splash of cold water. “You can’t be serious. Julian, it’s not worth it.”
He turned his head and looked me directly in the eye. I fought not to react. For a long moment he didn’t respond, and I could feel, with what remained of my attention, Robert swallowing half a dozen things he wanted to say. Surely Julian would not be this stupid. No class was worth volunteering yourself to be hit full-force when your protections failed.
“It’s worth it to me,” he said softly, and left the table.
~
Had I done this to him?
Standing there in the monument, telling him something was coming. Trouble. That it had to do with him. But no, he’d signed up for his courses months ago; whatever was driving Julian, it predated anything I’d done. And I couldn’t convince myself this was what my readings had pointed at, either. Grayson wasn’t the enemy, even if she seemed like it right now. I found the hard copy of the course catalogue under my desk and flipped through it, missing the CM section entirely three times in a row. Finally I found it, and looked up Combat Shielding. It was in the section for graduate students, marked with the symbol that warned of potential danger.
“Gods damn him,” I growled, and dropped the catalogue on the couch.
Unbidden, my mind wove an image of him in the test: facing off against Grayson, defending himself, until he finally broke. He’d said he didn’t know if he was going to become a Guardian. Was this preparation for that future, or something else entirely?
I didn’t know, and neither did Robert or Liesel, and Julian wasn’t going to explain himself. But there was one other person on campus I could look to for help—even if she did keep mutated carnivorous plants in her office.
Grayson’s unblinking eyes settled on me the moment I sat down in front of her desk. I hadn’t come to her office hours before, precisely because she made me feel like a bug on a microscope slide. But I made myself say, “I was hoping I could ask you some questions about Guardianship.”
Behind her was something that might have been the fabled Venus flytrap gone wrong. It made for an ominous background. Grayson said, “You’re not the kind of student who comes here hoping for exciting tales of my past, Kimberly. Why the interest?”
People came to her office looking for gossip? Braver people than me. Even with my noble purpose, it was hard to say out loud. “I … I’ve been thinking about it. Becoming one.”
She didn’t have to say anything, or even raise her eyebrows. I grimaced. “I know. I’m not nearly good enough at CM. Yan lessons kind of backfired on me, I think, but I’m trying to work through that. And if I succeed….” Her level stare wasn’t helping. “Things go wrong. Someone has to deal with them. I’d rather be the person dealing, rather than the one standing uselessly on the sidelines.”
And that was why divination, despite my knack for it, wasn’t enough. After Noah died of psi-sickness, my mother went through a period of rabid overprotectiveness. She later went to therapy and got over it, but it left me with a profound dislike of being wrapped in cotton wool. I wanted to do more than just sit in a room and forecast possible futures. I wanted to be the sort of person who could do more.
Grayson’s steepled fingers folded gracefully. “I trust you know it isn’t as exciting as it looks in the movies. The reality isn’t half so attractive—an unpleasant truth many would-be Guardians discover when they start the training. It’s long and difficult, and many give up along the way.”
“What about wilders?”
Her eyes narrowed. Okay, that wasn’t my most subtle conversational gambit ever. “Their situation is different. You’re friends with Julian Fiain?” I nodded. “He’s an interesting young man.”
Then a long pause. I tried not to squirm—easier said than done.
Finally she said, “They follow their own path to that end. Other Guardians must have a Ps.D., but wilders’ education produces the same effect, so that requirement is waived for them. Their natural strength also helps. A wilder, even a young one, is often a match for a Ps.D.”
Again the question of why Julian was at Welton, getting a substandard education. I doubted that making him more well-rounded as a human being was a worthwhile reason, in the government’s eyes. “But they aren’t required to become Guardians, as far as I know. So why do most of them do it?” They couldn’t all be crazy.
“That, Kimberly, is a question you’d do better to ask a wilder,” Grayson said softly. “The government encourages them in that direction, but has no legal right to demand it. In truth, the idea for Guardians came from wilders. After First Manifestation, they automatically assumed that role, and since they make up such a tiny percentage of the population, their numbers were augmented with other highly trained bloods. But if you want to know why wilders acted as Guardians in the first place, or why they go on doing so of their own free will, I’m not the one to ask.”
Julian was. If I could get an answer out of him.
Then Grayson straightened in her chair and put me back under the microscope. “As far as your own work is concerned, Kimberly, overcoming the negative conditioning the Yan method can produce is difficult—but not impossible. I recommend you stop thinking about it.”
“What?” That made no sense at all.
“Stop trying to work past it with logic. You’ll have your best success if you attempt something without thinking, and let your gift respond naturally. It usually only takes one or two experiences to break the pattern.”
Don’t think about a purple elephant. It was already almost impossible not to think about my doubts; how was I supposed to manage this when logic was one of my best defenses against them? Yet she was probably right. I already knew I did my best work when I got away from anything Yan-related, and listened to my instincts rather than my head. Somehow I had to stretch that to cover everything.
A timid knock at the door interrupted us. “Come in,” Grayson called out.
A guy I recognized from class stuck his head in diffidently. Grayson looked at her watch in surprise. “Hiroshi, my apologies. I lost track of the time. Kimberly, I’m sorry to have to cut this off so abruptly—but do come by again if you have any further questions.”
How do I get myself to stop thinking? Should I really become a Guardian? Why is my friend crazy?
She couldn’t answer those questions for me. And I doubted she’d take it well if I asked how badly she was going to hurt Julian in the exam. I thanked her and made my escape.
Exams. They were barely a week away. My safety might not be at risk, but my grades were. I needed to start studying.
~
According to the course site’s calculator, if I did how I expected to on the exam, I’d walk out of Grayson’s class with a B. If I had a particularly good day on the practical, I might get a B-plus.
Not good enough for Guardian training. But I had no intention of stopping there.
Rodriguez barely even bothered arguing with me when I went in for my advisory meeting, course schedule for the next quarter in hand. Not only was it going to be a six-credit term, four of those six were CM. Three were lecture courses without lab components—including one on Ring Structure, which would make my mother’s head explode—but the fourth, Lesser Banishing Rituals, had plenty of hands-on work. I was going to break this block, or die trying.
Assuming exams didn’t kill me first, along with all my fellow students. The thrice-yearly madness had descended, dragging us all down with it. Every ritual workroom and Arboretum glade was booked; even the dismal reading rooms of Talman filled up. Extracurricular groups were forbidden to schedule meetings. Campus felt dead, even at mealtimes, with people darting down to the dining hall only long enough to grab food, then hauling it back to their rooms like squirrels storing nuts for winter.
By virtue of sheer paper, I’d managed to lay claim to an entire small table in the café on the top floor of Gardner, covering the surface with printouts of my CM notes. I wasn’t looking at them, though; I was staring out the window at the Arboretum. No snow softened its stark edges yet. The forest was all grey and dull brown, broken only by the darkness of evergreens. Not very comforting.
“I see I am not the only one brooding.”
I glanced up from my reverie to find Robert looming over my table. His face, guarded as it was, looked like I felt. Somewhere in Adler, in one of the shielded chambers, Grayson was testing Julian. “Have a seat. We can brood together.”
Robert stole a chair from a nearby table. The guy there didn’t even glance up from his index cards. “She’ll not kill him, obviously. But he was unable to change his exam schedule, and so he will walk into his conjuration exam tomorrow having just survived a one-sided magical duel.”
“That hardly seems fair.”
“Indeed it is not. But so it shall be.”
“And what did Julian think of it?”
A bitter snort. “What do you think? He shrugged and said that if that was how things must be, then he had no choice but to accept it.”
Typical. I sighed. “When is he supposed to be done?”
“I have no idea.” Robert gave me a slantwise look. “I’d advise not looking for him. I gather that he’d prefer not to be civil this evening. And he has that exam tomorrow.”
Did he think I was going to hunt Julian down? “I have an exam, too—Historical Tarot. Don’t worry, Robert. I’ll leave him be.”
Robert nodded. “I myself am imposing on Geoff, as we both have the shamanism exam on the morrow. Julian may have the room to himself, if he comes home.”
“Where else would he go?” I asked. “It’s not as though he can sleep in the Arboretum. What’s he going to do, hole up in the basement of Morrison?”
“Damned if I know. Sometimes he just vanishes. For all I know, he does sleep in the forest. Or perhaps he doesn’t sleep at all. I don’t know what goes on in his head anymore.” Robert’s tone was strained. I put one hand out to touch his and he grimaced. “My apologies. This term has been a hard one for all. And I’ve been reminded of late how little I understand him.”
An echo of my own thoughts. “It isn’t our fault,” I said, trying to make myself believe it. “In the end, it’s up to Julian to decide how much he wants to let other people in.”
“He does, you know,” Robert said. “On occasion. In tiny increments. But it seems to take some crisis to break through, to push him past his self-control, and not always then.”
“Rarely, I would say. Stress makes him lock down more.” Witness his desire for solitude tonight.
We sat for a moment in silence. If I’d gone prying in Robert’s mind, no doubt I would have seen the mirror to my own worries. Finally he rose, saying, “Well, I must be on my way to Geoff’s, and you, my lady, must study.” For the first time, he noticed my CM notes papering the table. “I thought it was tarot you had tomorrow?”
“I’m ready for it. CM’s the one that worries me.” After a month and a half of me in the Palladian Circle, he knew why.
Robert gave me a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. “I’m sure you will do well—but I wish you luck anyway. Shall we meet for dinner tomorrow, to celebrate our wretched, exam-ridden state? Liesel as well, and Julian, if he wishes.”
“Sure. But not a dining hall; I need a real break. Pho Pasteur?”
“Vietnamese would be delightful. I will see you at seven.”
I watched him depart and stared at the door for a while, thinking on what he’d said, thinking on Julian, before applying myself to my studies once more.
~
Liesel wasn’t home that evening; she’d ensconced herself in Barnet to read until her eyes fell out. I had the room to myself as I prepared for my tarot exam.
Looking at old decks wasn’t reassuring. I idly shuffled and cut one, then dealt a card. The Magician. My attempts to get further information on either the Moon or the Tower had turned up nothing; I wasn’t even positive the two were connected. It just seemed impossible that the cards could warn me of hidden danger, and then shove the Tower up my nose, without them being related. But how?
I pulled out the runes Julian had given me and picked one blindly. Thurisaz. Nothing there either.
The door to my room opened.
I thought it was Liesel. Then all the hairs on the back of my neck rose straight up as a chill wave of strangeness washed over me. I yelped and spun my chair, and found Julian standing in the doorway.
“Am I interrupting you?” he asked.
Technically I was studying, but even if I’d wanted to keep working, the look on his face would have stopped me. Julian looked dead. There were no physical marks on him, but Grayson’s attacks wouldn’t have left any.
I realized I hadn’t said anything yet. “No, no, of course not. Come in. Sit down. Let me get you something to drink.” He didn’t seem to mind my babbling. I pulled a power drink from the fridge; as much as I loathed them, I’d started drinking them this term. Their only redeeming quality was their ability to restore energy and nutrients. Julian looked like he needed a six-pack, at least.
He drank it down in one unbroken gulp, too tired to even grimace at the taste. I sank back into my chair and thought about what Robert had said. Well, I hadn’t gone looking for Julian; he’d come to me.
Julian leaned his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. He wasn’t asleep, though. I watched his shirt rise and fall, telegraphing the movement of his ribs beneath. The stairs had probably taken more out of him then he could afford at the moment.
“How bad was it?” I said, once his breathing slowed.
“Bad,” he whispered. “But not unbearable.”
“Did you at least pass?” I asked, more acidly than I meant to.
“Yes.” He took the second drink I passed him without opening his eyes and drank that one down, too. “I lost my shields to one hit, and that got partly through, but she only got one more off before I managed to restore them. More than half the class never got their shields back up after they dropped. Then I took one more hit when they fell again, but she stopped after that.”
I wrapped my arms around my stomach, feeling sick. Grayson hadn’t done any permanent damage; he’d just have a headache tomorrow. But this wasn’t an exam as I was used to thinking of it. School might not be like real Guardianship, but I suspected Grayson brought it as close as she could.
Julian sipped at a third drink while I wrestled with an idea. His headache had no doubt started already. Aspirin wouldn’t be enough, and he’d categorically refuse anything stronger. Health Services could help—Grayson had probably told her students to go there—but he wouldn’t agree to that, either. Not from strangers. But he might accept it from a friend.
“Would you let me try to help?” I asked softly.
He paused. Then he took another long sip, without answering. I crossed my fingers and hoped. If his pride made him refuse, I was going to throttle him.
“Thank you,” he said at last.
It took a moment for me to realize that meant yes. When it finally sank home, I rose and perched awkwardly on the arm of the chair. He leaned his head back again and closed his eyes as I laid my fingertips lightly on his temples, shivering at the contact.
Then he dropped a few of his shields.
I clenched my teeth. I’d known, by the simple fact that he let me in, that it was bad. But the backlash-headache was worse than I’d expected, far worse. It couldn’t have helped that Julian was tired even before the test began. He should have gone to Health Services.
But he wasn’t there; he was here, and I had to do something. I couldn’t fix his enervation without a circle to raise power, but I could block some of his headache. He needed a good night’s sleep to have a fighting chance at concentrating on his exam tomorrow.
I laid the blocks quickly, trying to be delicate, even though I usually only did this on myself. I felt an overwhelming urge to peek at a few other things while I was there. This was a splendid opportunity to judge his real emotional state, behind the facade he projected, and he was glowing with all manner of shields I wanted to inspect, too. But that would violate his trust. I stomped firmly on such ideas and restrained myself to only what I’d offered.
“Thank you,” he said again when I took my fingers away. Some of the lines on his face had smoothed out, and there was less tension in his shoulders, beneath the thin fabric of his long-sleeved shirt. I stood as he sat forward and stretched his back, cat-like. “That helped.”
“I’m glad,” I said, throat tight. “I only wish I could do more.”
“I’ll be fine,” he replied, rising to his feet. My hands curled in frustration. I wanted him to stay. We so rarely got these moments, quiet and open, with his usual defenses and self-control relaxed for once; I prized them, and now this one was ending.
But he needed sleep. I couldn’t argue against that.
“Good luck tomorrow,” Julian said as he headed for the door.
“You too,” I returned automatically. Then he was gone, and I sat back down and put my head in my hands. He was okay. More or less.
It was enough.
~
Robert could rant at length with little or no encouragement, and at the restaurant the next night I was happy to let him. He described in vivid detail the incomprehensibility of the questions on his shamanism exam, quoting from memory to illustrate the impenetrability of his Israeli-born professor’s grammar, while I picked at my food and tried to find an appetite.
My tarot exam didn’t go badly, I thought, even though I’d woken up with a headache—probably a side effect of touching Julian’s own. Or maybe it was a product of my dream.
I could hardly even call it a dream. Nothing had happened, unless I’d forgotten it so thoroughly I didn’t even remember the forgetting. Just a single image, that I still saw whenever I closed my eyes.
A gauntlet, lying before me on the ground.
An honest-to-god piece of armor, such as the medieval student group might make, formed of overlapping pieces of metal and articulated through the fingers. A gauntlet, lying on featureless dirt.
The image awoke in me such a tangle of feelings that I’d barely been able to put them aside for the exam. Apprehension was the strongest; I didn’t know whether people in the Middle Ages had really thrown down gauntlets to announce a challenge, but that was sure as hell the impression I got from this one. But there had been nothing to indicate what the challenge was, or who had issued it.
Maybe no one had issued it. Maybe it was just the hurdles I’d set myself to clear.
So there was curiosity as well as apprehension. I didn’t know what the gauntlet signified, and I wanted to: that made sense. How could I explain, though, the sensation I could only describe as joy? Why had the challenge pleased me so much? I had no rationale for it, but every time I thought of the dream, I felt that same fierce gladness. Side-by-side with gut-twisting fear, and that made no sense at all. The fear wasn’t that I’d fail the challenge—or not only that. More like I was afraid I wouldn’t even try.
Yes. That was it. I was afraid I wouldn’t pick up the gauntlet.
But wasn’t that what I’d been doing this whole term?
I became aware of eyes on me, and looked up. Both Liesel and Robert were staring at me. Julian was passed out in Kinfield; we’d decided it was better to leave him that way. “Sorry. My mind’s elsewhere. Which doesn’t bode well, seeing as how I’ve still got three exams left. Two tomorrow, and one Saturday.”
Robert winced. “My sympathies. Such a schedule should be illegal.”
I shrugged. Right now my exams were the least of my worries. At least, I hoped they were. CM was tomorrow, and although Grayson hadn’t killed Julian, that didn’t mean she wouldn’t kill me.
I wondered if Robert knew his roommate had visited me last night.
“But you will be free Sunday night, and that is a mercy,” Robert pointed out. “You may enjoy the festivities with a clear mind.”
“Assuming I still have one left,” I said, then paused in confusion. “Festivities?”
He smiled wryly. “The Samhain ritual, and Geoff’s party.”
I stared at him. I’d completely forgotten that the end of the month was so close. “I don’t have a costume.”
“Borrow something from Ceridwen,” Liesel suggested. “She’s always up for dressing you like Christine Rendal’s latest role.”
I doubted I had the energy for our downstairs neighbor’s enthusiasm. My resemblance to the actress made her far too happy. “Maybe I’ll just come as a dead college student, killed by stress.” Robert sat up straighter, and I made myself smile, to allay his concern. “Don’t worry about me. You’re the one who has exams after the party.”
“My own suffering does not eliminate yours,” he pointed out.
“But allow my misery to enjoy company.” The dream felt far too significant to be about something as minor as exams. No, this was the Chariot, reversed in my reading—the defeat I would suffer if I wasn’t prepared. This was the Strength card, the environment of my question, only it wasn’t just Grayson’s class, or learning CM, or even my hopes for the future. It was something more. I knew it.
I just didn’t know what it was.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Liesel asked quietly.
I met her eyes and smiled again, locking down my worries where even her empathic senses couldn’t read them. “Right now? No. But once I get through exams, I’ll be fine.”
~
The grassy slope of the riverbank seemed to float in the light of the waxing moon, as though it were drifting away from the concrete world of dorms and classroom buildings. On the edges of the clearing, the oak trees loomed dark, marking the boundary of Geoff’s party. Whether Halloween or Samhain, this night was special to many people on campus—even when it fell in the middle of exam period.
I stood in the shadow of a tree, watching people go by. One last, unexpected warm snap had lured students outside, many of them dressed for the night, though not so fantastically as they would be for my department’s masquerade next term. Even if they weren’t saving their best for then, not everybody had the time or energy to spare for costuming, not with tests still hanging over their heads.
I had no such worries. Laziness had kept me from going to Ceridwen for something to wear, but I was basking in the deliciously light feeling of a burden lifted. My exams were done. I’d floated through the Palladian Circle’s Samhain ritual earlier that evening, celebrating the harvest and commemorating the long-forgotten departure of the Otherworld, and with that taken care of, I had not a care in the world until next Monday.
“Enjoying your freedom?”
I turned around and found myself backing up a step. Julian’s body was unremarkable in the standard college uniform of t-shirts and jeans, but in the clothes he’d chosen for tonight, his eyes were suddenly not the only unsettling part of him. I was very glad he didn’t choose that moment to meet my gaze. Julian looked as though he lived partly in the Otherworld.
As though he knew how alarming he looked, Julian smiled and smoothed his black velvet doublet with one long-fingered hand. I blinked; the spell was broken. “Nice costume.” Close-fitting black pants, high black leather boots—had he raided the theatre department? His black velvet cloak had a vivid dark green lining.
He bowed at the compliment. “I could say the same to you.”
I suppressed the urge to tug at my bodice. “Thank you.” After the Samhain ritual I’d changed out of harvest colors into a dark blue skirt, a snowy white shirt, and a black bodice that might be just a wee bit too snug. As long as I didn’t have to run anywhere, I wouldn’t pop the seams—I hoped. “This is just thrown together out of my closet and Liesel’s.”
Julian extended one black-gloved hand. “Care to accompany me? I’m in search of drinks.”
The leather shielded me from his skin, so that I might have been touching anybody. I wondered if Julian was deliberately experimenting with the gloves, so he could lay aside his usual avoidance of touch, or whether the courtly gesture just went with the costume. Maybe his roommate’s mannerisms were rubbing off on him. Speaking of whom….
“Where’s Robert, anyway?” I asked as we set off across the dead grass. “He vanished after the ritual.”
“Coming. He’s putting the finishing touches on his costume. The madman is coming as a leprechaun.”
I laughed. “A six-foot-four leprechaun?”
“Why not?” Julian released my hand to collect two plastic goblets of punch.
After making our greetings to Geoff, the party’s host, who was dressed as Friar Tuck’s Thai brother, Julian and I circulated through the party. Robert arrived, costumed as advertised, and we listened to him sing beneath a huge tree, his body wrapped around his guitar. To my surprise, he sang Irish songs—some new, some very old—about the conflict in his homeland, the three-way strife between Catholics, Protestants, and the Wiccan bloods who flocked there after First Manifestation. For all that Robert spoke loudly and at length about wanting to get out of Ireland and away from its issues, those troubles meant more to him than he would admit.
We moved on at last. I had Julian’s cloak around my shoulders—my shirt, while pretty, was not remotely warm enough—and curling my fingers into its green lining, I wondered how much I could read into the gesture. He’d come to me after his Combat Shielding exam; he’d unbent enough to ask me for help. One tiny step closer. Could I manage another?
Might as well try. “Mind if we talk?” I asked, and it came out pleasingly even.
Julian glanced sideways at me, but merely said, “Sure.” Without us discussing it, we widened our latest loop, so that it carried us along the bank of the Copper Creek, away from the party.
I wasn’t surprised. He never stayed long at those things. And I was just as happy to have this conversation without witnesses. Whether it was his costume or something else, tonight, for the first time in ages, I found myself seriously uneasy in Julian’s presence. Worse even than when he startled me at the beginning of the year. His clothing suited him all too well, with the gloves and the cloak and his hair silver-white.
Julian paused on the creek’s edge and pulled off his right glove so he could fish an empty beer can out of the water. Holding the dripping can, he frowned in annoyance. “I don’t have any pockets.”
“It might fit in my pouch,” I said. He crumpled the can, the tendons in his hand standing out, until it was small enough for me to slip in with my port and key. I watched as he stripped off his other glove and tucked it into his belt with the first, and by the time he was done I had gathered my resolve to speak.
“I know you don’t like people worrying about you,” I said, “because you think it means we doubt your strength. But it’s not that.” He’d stopped, and his posture spoke of startlement even if he let nothing slip empathically. “Julian—you’re the strongest person I know. And I don’t mean your Krauss rating, either. I think you can survive anything. But it has a cost, and that’s what worries me.”
His lips compressed into a thin line. Then he said, “Combat Shielding.”
“And everything else on top of it. But yes, that specifically.” I tugged the cloak straight, to give my hands something to do. “I don’t like what it cost you. And I’m not the only one.”
He walked onward, and again I could tell it was to hide his expression from me. “So what—you think I should back off? Kim, I can’t.”
“I believe you,” I said quietly. I let him stay a step ahead, enough to feel as if he had a measure of privacy. “But I’d like to know why. What are you preparing for, that makes you half-kill yourself like this?”
We were well away from the party now, the trees overhanging us and beginning to crowd the bank. I was almost certain Julian wasn’t going to answer when abruptly he said, “You’re thinking about Guardianship, aren’t you.”
It was one possible reason for his choices, but—oh. “I won’t even ask how you figured that out. Yes, I am. If I can get past my trouble with CM. You’re changing the subject.”
“No, I’m not. If you’re thinking of it, you’ve looked up the training. You know what it’s like.”
“But if you’re preparing to be a Guardian, why are you even in school? I need this. You don’t.”
Julian bent his head briefly, perhaps to watch his footing. “There are things I can learn better here. But Kim—” A muscle flickered in his jaw, as if he had clenched his teeth before going on. “Education is only part of it.”
“And the rest is….”
Robert was right; Julian only opened up if something pushed him. Normally I waited for circumstances to do it for me, but tonight I’d taken matters into my own hands, and for once it was producing results. “For ordinary Guardians—people like you—it’s different. A job, like any other. You go where you’re sent, and you fix problems because you can, because you’re the sort of person who wants to.”
It was more or less what I’d said to Grayson. “So why do you do it?”
“Because we have to,” Julian said, almost too quietly to hear. “The problems find us. Or we find them. And we can’t walk away, can’t tell ourselves somebody else will take care of it for us, because we have these gifts and we have to use them where we can, to help people. They encourage that in our training, but the truth is they don’t have to; it’s just there. Part of us. Maybe just because if we don’t put an end to the problem, it might put an end to us.” He paused, halting the flood of words, the startling honesty. His next words chilled me to the bone. “My kind rarely lives to be old.”
My kind. As if the wilders were a race apart—not just humans with strong gifts, but something else entirely. Something more like the sidhe.
I bit my lip. What was the life expectancy of a wilder? I’d never asked. And no point asking if he wanted that life. From the sound of it, that would be like asking if he wanted to breathe air.
He stopped, and I walked on another few steps before realizing he wasn’t at my side. Turning, I saw him standing perfectly still, a black-and-silver statue in the middle of the path.
He wasn’t looking at me.
I took a hesitant step toward him, and then another. “Julian?”
No answer. I’d never touched Julian without permission, not once in more than two years of knowing him—but I reached out now to put my hand on his tense shoulder.
He threw me off with enough force to send me stumbling into a tree. Even as I hit the trunk, something went wrong. Julian twisted, crying out, his whole body contorting. The air around us turned black. Storm clouds appeared out of nowhere, blotting out the stars and moon, and let loose a torrent of cold rain. Julian stumbled, fell to one knee, lurched to his feet. He clawed frantically at his body, as if trying to tear something off his back; his nails caught the velvet of his doublet, splitting the seams, ripping it off. The rain plastered his white shirt to his back before it joined the remains of his doublet on the muddy ground.
Julian collapsed to his knees on the dead grass beside the stream, raking his own skin bloody. Clinging for support to the tree behind me, I desperately centered myself and threw a telepathic shield over him.
It had no effect.
Whatever was attacking him slid through my shield like water, as if it weren’t even there. Dropping it, I gasped for air. Julian convulsed, his hands slamming into the earth. If I didn’t do something—
Without thinking, I centered myself, drew power, and flung a magical shield over Julian.
The instant it went up, something slammed into it. I would’ve fallen if it weren’t for my death grip on a low branch. Remembering what Julian said, I tried to sink the energy into the ground, but it was even harder than I’d imagined. This was a magical attack, and the fact that I’d gotten the shield right for the first time in my life didn’t make me prepared. My protection bowed, nearly snapped. I gritted my teeth and hung on, but I wouldn’t last for long, and all I could think of was what happened to a shield—and the one maintaining it—when it took too many direct hits.
Then a wild surge of power rushed through me, snapping my head back against the tree. I saw stars. For a moment everything was confused juggling, that thing almost breaking through, and then suddenly I wasn’t in charge of the shield any more. I was swept along, energy draining out of me at an unbelievable rate, pulled out by Julian—gods and sidhe, the power in him….
The force vanished.
I fell to my knees and hit a rock, but the pain didn’t register. I crouched there, shivering in the still, icy air, my dripping hair plastering my face. Finally I mustered the strength to reach for the tree and pull myself to my feet.
Julian was still kneeling on the grass of the riverbank. Occasional shudders wracked his body. I could see them chasing across the white, bloodied skin of his back; I had to get him inside, or he’d freeze to death. The rain was gone, the night cooling with frightening speed. But I couldn’t make myself move.
At length Julian grew still, his tortured breathing going silent. And so I couldn’t stop a gasp when, without warning, he rose to his feet. The way he stood there, how he’d moved, made me suddenly afraid to approach him. Not human. And whatever had just happened … this was his life, the kind of thing he’d been trained for. The Julian standing in front of me wasn’t a college student, not right now.
Without turning his head, he spoke. “Kim, go home.”
“Wh—what?” I managed to get out.
Julian snagged his soaked shirt from the ground. “Go home. It isn’t safe for you to be outside right now.”
“What about you?” I demanded.
But he’d already vanished, leaving me alone on the riverbank with only the shredded remains of his doublet for company.