CHAPTER TEN
THE GARDEN OF FEARS
The following night, after another frustrating day in grana class, Javi and Pippa showed up at Legacy’s door.
“We have a plan,” Javi said. “Also, why are there so many cats in your room?”
Legacy shrugged. She’d gotten used to the cats. They came in the window and found warm corners, where they curled up, watched her, and licked their paws.
“This cat thing has gotten out of control,” Pippa said, shooing an orange tabby off Legacy’s chair so she could sit down. “It was a nice gesture on Silla’s part, but this is just preposterous.”
“Could we focus on the plan?” Legacy said. The qualifiers began the day after tomorrow, and she was hoping the “plan” involved something miraculous that would allow her to start summoning grana.
“Follow us,” Javi said.
Obediently, Legacy trailed Pippa and Javi while they ascended the stone stairs to the upper floors of the palace. The chandeliers that usually lit the corridors had been put out for the night, but Javi had a torch that he held before them as they climbed. Legacy followed its glow, placing her feet carefully on the softened stones. When they reached the locked door of the forbidden top floor, Pippa fumbled around for a key.
“But it’s forbidden,” Legacy said. “How—”
“I took the key from my father,” Pippa said, coloring slightly under her freckles. “I know it’s stealing, and stealing is bad. But it’s just for one night. And we won’t even look in the workshop.”
But Legacy was already shaking her head. “I’m here on a scholarship,” she said. “I’m not breaking any rules.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Javi said. “You think anyone else here is following rules?”
Legacy started to say that everyone did seem to be following rules, rules she’d never been taught, but Pippa stopped her by touching her arm.
“What about the pyruses?” she said. “What about the lurals? They’re illegal in the rest of the country.”
“But—”
“No buts,” Javi said.
Then Pippa swung the door open, and Legacy followed the glow of Javi’s torch until, in a dark corridor, Javi suddenly stopped and blew it out.
In a moment, the darkness became so complete it felt thick. It felt too thick to breathe, as though the air were wet wool.
Legacy felt her heart beating harder in her chest. “Why did you do that?” she whispered. “What if we can’t find our way out? What if we get caught and—”
“You have to light the way,” Javi said.
“This is the plan,” Pippa said.
Javi nodded. “Now you have to summon your light.”
Legacy started to sweat. Every time she tried to breathe, the wet wool got caught in her throat.
“Why would I be able to do it here if I can’t even do it in the grana classroom?” Legacy said. Then she felt something warm and soft brush past her ankles. She started—then heard the soft footfall of a cat’s paws.
“Because you’re afraid,” Javi said.
“Because you have to,” Pippa said.
“That’s what they teach us here at the academy,” Javi said. “You’d learn it, too, if you had the benefit of a few extra months.”
“But unfortunately,” Pippa said, “you don’t have a few months. We need you to do this right now.”
“Ever wonder why Polroy tells you to run for your life?” Javi said. “Ever wonder why he tells you to play as if your life’s on the line? The greatest players play well because they’re afraid of what might happen if they don’t. They play well because if they fail, they’ll lose everything that makes them themselves. Because all they are is champions. If they lose, they’re nothing, not even themselves.”
“They’re nothing more than a dark corridor,” Pippa chimed in.
“They’re an empty space,” Javi said.
“They’re—”
“I get it!” Legacy said.
She was still having trouble breathing, but she closed her eyes. She tried to focus. She tried to think about light. She imagined her body glowing. She tried in her mind’s eye to see the light’s pale fingers creeping along the dark hallway.
“You can do it,” Pippa whispered. She was trying to sound encouraging, but a new anxiety had crept into her voice.
“Hurry up,” Javi said. Even he sounded worried.
Legacy squeezed her eyes shut even tighter. She tried to focus harder, she tried to imagine a glow beginning to emanate from her skin, but all she could think about was how Javi’s breathing had gotten quicker and that Pippa was nervously biting her nails.
“I can’t,” Legacy said, and she was about to explain, but it was then that they heard a door slam, followed by the sound of human footsteps approaching.
“This way!” Pippa whispered, pushing Legacy into a door that gave inward. At the last minute, Legacy grabbed Javi and pulled him behind her, and they crouched against a wall, huddled together, too afraid of making a sound to shut the door behind them.
Legacy kept her eyes trained on the open doorway. In the faint light from his torch, she could make out Polroy’s big, shambling form. She could hear the swishing of his warm-up suit. Then she heard the tap tap of Argenti’s cane.
“But surely she’s shown some talent,” Polroy was saying.
“None at all,” Argenti answered. “She hasn’t the least trace of grana.”
“I don’t believe it,” Polroy said. “There’s got to be something special about her. Silla wouldn’t have chosen her for no reason.”
“But there’s nothing special in her at all,” Argenti said. “She’s just another undisciplined provi.”
Legacy was glad it was so dark, so nobody could see how she was blinking back tears. Pippa was holding her hand, and even after Argenti’s and Polroy’s voices receded, Javi kept one finger to his lips until he was sure the instructors weren’t coming back.
Then they had to feel their way along the walls of the corridor—following in Polroy and Argenti’s wake—to get back to the door that led to the staircase. And by the time they’d climbed back down and made their way back to Legacy’s bedroom, she’d had time to compose herself. Then it was Javi and Pippa who seemed more upset.
“What’s Argenti’s problem?” Javi said.
“Why does he hate you?” Pippa said.
“And how,” Javi said, “are you going to learn to summon your grana without him?”
The next night, Pippa and Javi came for her again.
“No,” Legacy said, remembering the feeling of the wet darkness clogging her throat, and the warm body of the cat brushing against her leg, and Polroy and Argenti talking about her in the corridor. “No way. Not another big plan.”
But Pippa and Javi were insistent. The qualifiers, they reminded her, started tomorrow. And she still hadn’t summoned her grana since her first morning at the academy.
Soon enough, Legacy found herself following Pippa and Javi past the courts to the Garden of Fears. In the darkness lit by Javi’s torch, Legacy looked around. Boxwood bushes pruned into the shapes of all kinds of animals—pyruses, lurals, and crackles—loomed high overhead. Their gargantuan wings seemed to stretch upward, and their claws raked the air.
They were standing at the base of an enormous bat. Its lifted wings formed a shape like an umbrella split in half. The detail in the pruned limbs was amazing: Legacy could see its catlike ears, the wrinkles in its wings, and the tiny fangs that crept out of its mouth.
Until Javi blew out his torch.
Then he began to “encourage” her once again.
“Why aren’t you afraid?” he said. “You should be. You haven’t summoned your grana since the first morning here.”
“You need your grana to win tomorrow,” Pippa said.
“You can’t play people like Villy or Gia without any grana,” Javi said.
Legacy closed her eyes. She tried hard to feel her fingers warming. She tried to feel a tingling at the roots of her hair. But nothing was happening, and then once again, impossibly, she heard the tap tap of Argenti’s cane.
“Shh,” Pippa said.
The three of them huddled in closer to the bat and peered through the darkness to see the outline of Argenti, hunched over his cane, standing in close conversation with Lucco.
Argenti was saying something and gesturing pointedly with his cane. He was clearly agitated.
“Don’t be foolish,” Lucco said in response. He said something else, but his voice was too quiet to carry through all the leaves of the garden.
Now Argenti raised his voice. “It will come back to haunt you!” he said, and swung his cane overhead, jabbing it toward the ramparts of the palace. Just then Legacy felt the air stirring around her, and she realized that the enormous bat was flapping its wings.
It was Pippa who yelped. Javi clapped a hand over her mouth, but Argenti and Lucco had already spun around.
“Who’s there?” Argenti called.
Lucco reached for Argenti’s arm, as if to restrain him. “Leave it,” he said. “The bushes are coming to life.”
But Argenti pulled his arm free and began hobbling toward Legacy and Javi and Pippa, waving his cane so that the bat flapped its wings even harder. Legacy, Pippa, and Javi took off, sprinting through the Garden of Fears, past a high row of hedges. Then they threw themselves through a gate that opened into a more impenetrable darkness and ran along a silent corridor that smelled of earth and green leaves. For a while, all Legacy could hear was the sound of her heart beating in her own ears. But after a few minutes, she realized that she could no longer hear the sound of Argenti’s cane.
Only then did she realize they’d entered the hedge maze.
Then she stopped running, and besides the sounds of Pippa and Javi panting alongside her, she couldn’t hear anything at all. Not Lucco’s voice. Not wings flapping. Not even leaves stirring in the breeze.
“We’re stuck,” Pippa said. “We’ll never get out.”
“Don’t worry,” Javi said. “We just have to retrace our steps.”
But half an hour later, after trying over and over to retrace their steps, they only seemed to have stumbled deeper into the hedge maze, which towered so high overhead that it blocked out the light from the moon.
“Please, Legacy,” Pippa said. “Please summon your light.”
“If we don’t get out of here,” Javi said, “they’ll have to come find us. They’ll know we were out after bedtime. They’ll know we were spying.”
“We’ll all get kicked out,” Pippa said.
“Enough! ” Legacy said. “It’s not working. No matter how scared I get, I still can’t summon my grana.”
Javi was silent.
Pippa was silent as well, but she seemed to be thinking. “Maybe she’s right,” she said to Javi. “Maybe fear doesn’t help her. In the old days, in Ancient Stringing Craft—”
Javi smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Now is not the time,” he said, “for more blather about Ancient Stringing Craft.”
“Let her finish,” Legacy said.
“In the old days,” Pippa repeated, “stringers used to use minerals representing all the different psychological states: fear, but also love and hate, pity and anger. Now we just focus on fear, but maybe Legacy’s grana is more closely related to another psychological state.”
“I don’t know,” Javi said, but Pippa was already excited.
“Maybe something you don’t let yourself feel,” Pippa was saying. “Something you keep bottled up. Anger, for instance. Maybe it’s anger.”
Javi looked at Legacy, a new interest rising to his face. “Yeah,” he said. “Why aren’t you angrier about how all the kids here call you provi?”
“Or how everyone bribes the builders,” Pippa said, “but you can’t, because your father doesn’t have any money.”
Legacy had curled her hands into fists. She squeezed her eyes shut. That familiar claw was beginning to curl in her stomach.
“Or how Argenti hates you,” Javi said.
“Or how Gia treats you,” Pippa said.
“Or the conditions in the provinces,” Javi said, running a hand over the scar on his neck. “The shantytowns, the mudslides in the mines, the dangers in the factories.”
“Or the fact that your father won’t let you play tennis,” Pippa said. “Or how your mother left you alone to take care of the littles, or—”
Legacy felt her skin getting hot. Her fingertips were burning. Then the roots of her hair started to tingle.
She knew it was working even before she heard Pippa draw in a sharp breath. When she opened her eyes, she saw that a beam of light had stretched down the corridor of the hedge maze, lighting the way to a door cut into the boxwood bush.
“You idiot,” Javi was saying. “You idiot!”
But at the same time he was hugging her, and then Pippa joined in as well, and the warmth in Legacy’s fingers only grew warmer. She was angry and laughing at once, and still, her light was glowing. She was leading Javi and Pippa through the hedge maze, shining a narrow, brilliant path through the leaves, slipping through the Garden of Fears and back into the palace.