CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CORASITE DUST
In the morning, before Legacy’s second and final qualifying match, Pippa helped braid her hair while maintaining a relentless stream of nervous advice.
“You’ve got to keep your emotions under control,” she said, pulling Legacy’s hair so tight she winced.
“Got it,” Legacy said.
“It’s great that you’re expressing your anger,” she said, painting her cheeks. “But you also have to stay measured and calm. You can’t be so intense and dramatic.”
“Got it!” Legacy said, standing up from the stool and stepping away from Pippa in irritation.
She looked at herself in the mirror. With the red lines on her cheekbones, her three braids, and her red dress, she looked like any other academy student.
And yet even her own stringer was doubting her ability to keep her emotions under control. And when she went on court, the announcers would doubt it as well. So would the crowd. They’d comment on how she was imitating Gia, but they’d all be watching her more closely than they watched the little Gias. They’d be waiting for her to show her true colors. Waiting for her to express her “unpredictable emotions.”
Outside, as she headed onto the main court, Legacy felt the crowd’s eyes on her skin. She felt what they expected from her. She knew how she’d have to behave to persuade them she was worthy. Even if she was the only player here representing the provinces, she would have to remain perfectly calm. Even if her best friend might have to go work in the factories, she couldn’t act dramatic or in any way “out of control,” because otherwise she’d confirm their opinion that she was an unpredictable provi.
Before she even hit the first shot, Legacy’s hand on her racket was a clenched fist.
Across the net, her opponent was bouncing the ball, preparing to serve.
“Here we have Robby Groggio, of the silk Groggios, preparing to serve,” Paula was saying. “And what a serve he has, a serve we can be proud of !”
Legacy felt the claw in her stomach beginning to reach toward her fingers and up to her skull, tingling the roots of her hair.
Still, she managed to keep her anger under control for the first set. Robby was one of Villy’s followers. He had a weak backhand. She’d beaten him in practices before. Now he was causing the winds to buffet around her, but luckily, even though he was physically stronger than Nina, his grana was weaker. His winds weren’t much more effective than the normal morning breeze Legacy felt in her hair when she was playing against Gus.
She won the first set without summoning any grana. In the second set, as well, she did everything she could to keep her grana under wraps. She remembered how much it had hurt in her match against Nina, and when she felt her fingertips getting too hot, she closed her eyes and remembered playing against the orphanage wall. Mechanically, she counted her footsteps. She timed her shots. She listened for the ping of the ball striking her strings.
For the most part, it worked. She was up in the second set and serving to win the match, when she heard Paula.
“Sure, sure,” Paula was saying, “she’s playing well for a girl from the provinces. But we can’t expect her to hold up in the nationals if she’s matched against the elites.”
Across the court, she saw Robby snicker. Despite the fact that he was losing, with his stupid Villy pompadour and his weak grana, he was snickering at Legacy.
She drew up short for a moment. Everyone, she thought, was against her. Robby and Paula, Polroy and Argenti. Even Pippa didn’t believe in her ability to control her emotions, and Pippa was supposed to be her friend.
At that, the claw in Legacy’s stomach started burning. Heat shot toward her fingers. She felt a flash of rage and a moment of perfect confidence that she would be the best player ever to compete in the republic.
As Legacy served, her hand was scorching hot. When her racket struck the ball, a flash of pain shot up her body and ricocheted in her skull.
The whole world started to tilt. The audience in their chairs slid up toward the clouds. Legacy’s head hit the ground, and the world went instantly black.
Legacy opened her eyes and looked around. She was lying in a room lined with glass cabinets that were stacked with rolls of athletic tape and boxes of recovery sleeves. In the corner, there was a pool of steaming, roiling, burbling water. She was occupying one of a few narrow cots lining the walls, and Pippa and Javi were sitting beside her.
“Sorry it took so long for us to come,” Pippa said.
“Argenti’s been guarding the door,” Javi said.
“He won’t let anyone visit,” Pippa said.
“He keeps muttering about cats and spies and plots afoot,” Javi said. “The only way we could get him to leave was to tell him there were a ton of cats in your bedroom. Then he rushed off, muttering and waving his cane.”
Legacy blinked at them. How long had she been lying here? The last memory she could dredge up was the thump of her head hitting the ground. Before that, she remembered serving. Then her stomach sank. She must have fainted on the last point of the match.
“I lost,” she said. She thought of Van. She saw him sitting in the attic, wearing his crooked glasses, his bad leg pulled up underneath him. She’d failed him. She hadn’t even made it to the nationals.
“You idiot,” Javi said. He was shaking his head and smiling.
Legacy glared at him in dismay. How could he be smiling now?
“You won!” Pippa said. “You beat him.”
“But I fainted—”
“Your last serve was an ace,” Javi said.
“Then you passed out,” Pippa said. “And you’ve been here since yesterday, and nationals start tomorrow, and we still haven’t figured out what to do with your racket.”
Now everything began to flood back. Legacy remembered Pippa braiding her hair before the match and Pippa’s warning to keep her emotions in check. Then Legacy’s hurt—for Pippa to doubt her, after all that claptrap about players and stringers trusting one another—began to flood back as well.
Pippa must have noticed the shift in Legacy’s expression, because her smiled faded as well.
“I’m so sorry, Leg,” she said.
“It’s Legacy,” Legacy murmured.
“It was my fault,” Pippa said. “It wasn’t your fault at all. That stringbind—the one we found on my father’s desk: it could have killed you.”
She pulled out her copy of Capulan’s Encyclopedia.
“Look,” she said, gesturing at a page with illustrations of an array of porcelain pots full of various metal powders. “It’s all here. A player with light grana—that’s you—is corasite-intense. That means you resonate with corasite, the metal associated with love. Even your anger—it resonates with corasite. And to play with a stringbind that doesn’t have any corasite is extraordinarily dangerous.”
Legacy shook her head. She was remembering that flash of light and the branch falling on Van. “But anger,” she said. “How’s that associated with love?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Pippa said.
Legacy thought for a moment. She remembered how Van had called her mother a witch. And in that moment, Legacy had felt love for her mother welling up in her heart. And that love had turned into anger.
“Maybe the source of anger is love?” Legacy said.
“Maybe without any love,” Javi said, “your anger has nowhere productive to go.”
Legacy and Pippa shot each other a glance. It was a pretty insightful comment, especially coming from Javi. Noticing their surprise, he scowled and crossed his muscled arms over his chest, trying to look as though he hadn’t wasted any time contemplating emotions.
“The heat was shooting back up my arm,” Legacy said, “into my shoulder.”
“Directing inward,” Pippa said. “Not outward.”
“I was directing my anger at myself?” Legacy said.
Pippa pointed to an illustration of a porcelain pot full of vermilion corasite dust. “Look here,” she said, reading from the page. “Corasite resonates not only with love for others, but also with self-love. Both must be permitted to express for anger grana to move in the proper direction. Without expression of self-love, anger grana will redirect inward.”
“So without any corasite in her racket,” Javi said, “she can’t channel any self-love?”
“And without self-love,” Pippa said, “her anger moves inward?”
“That’s why that stringbind’s so dangerous,” Javi said. “It redirects all your grana back into your body.”
“It could have been fatal,” Pippa said. She looked at Legacy. “I could have killed you, just by weaving that stringbind.”
“It’s not your fault,” Legacy said. “You only followed the recipe we found in your father’s workshop.”
Javi nodded. “She’s right,” he said. “But that can’t be the standard stringbind, right? Could you have grabbed the wrong recipe?”
“But it said ‘Recipe for the Standard Stringbind,’ ” Pippa said.
“Maybe someone planted it there,” Javi said.
Legacy shivered. “Maybe someone knew we were coming.”
“Someone who wanted you to lose,” Javi said.
“Or someone,” Pippa said, “who wanted to kill you.”
Legacy felt her face go cold. “But who would want to kill me?”
Javi started pacing. Pippa furrowed her brow.
“Do we still report this to your father?” Legacy said.
“I’m not sure that’s such a good plan,” Javi said. “I mean, we found that recipe on his desk. What if he’s the one who planted it there?”
Legacy glanced at Pippa. She was biting her lower lip.
“But what else can we do?” Legacy said.
“I could try to re-string it,” Pippa said, her voice wavering.
Javi nodded. “You could try to add some corasite.”
Legacy felt a rush of love for her friends. They’d already risked so much on her behalf: tampering with stringbinds, sneaking onto forbidden floors of the palace, flying around at night on winged horses. They were risking their places at the academy. Pippa was risking her relationship with her father. And Javi was risking going back to the provinces. Legacy felt as if her heart couldn’t expand any more in her chest.
“Thank you,” she said, looking at Pippa, then Javi. “But no. No more secrets. No more sneaking around. I’m not letting you two get kicked out.”
“But you can’t play with those strings,” Pippa said. Javi nodded in agreement.
Legacy shook her head. She remembered that all of this mess had come from disobeying her own father and sneaking around despite rules forbidding such dangerous behavior. Maybe Polroy was breaking the law. Maybe Argenti was with him. But that didn’t mean no adults could be trusted. Silla, after all, had invited her to the academy. Her father had steadfastly loved her. Sometimes, Legacy thought, it was best to trust adults, who usually understood things more clearly.
“No,” she said. “No more sneaking around. No more risks. I’ve hurt too many friends already. We’re going right now to report this to your father.”
It was Javi’s idea to distract Argenti by making a commotion about cats coming in through the window. Swinging his cane, Argenti came charging into the infirmary, and while he was busy searching for cats, the three of them snuck out. They headed up to the workshop.
On their way down the forbidden corridor, Pippa whispered to Legacy. “What did you mean about hurting too many friends?” she said.
“Always chattering,” Javi muttered.
Pippa rolled her eyes. But from then on, she held her tongue. They moved in silence as they headed toward the doorway into the workshop, which was how they were able to hear voices before they’d even rounded the corner.
“It’s not right,” a girl’s voice was saying. “It’s not fair.”
Legacy froze. Behind her, Javi and Pippa froze also.
“If Gia doesn’t win,” a man said in response, “Silla won’t continue supporting your mother.”
There was a long silence. Legacy crept closer to the door, then peeped past the corner. There, in the workshop, Lucco was sitting before the tall girl with the hunch.
He was holding out a pot of wax and a glass bottle of tincture, one in each hand.
Gia’s stringer stared at the pot without moving. Her face twisted like a wet dishrag getting wrung out.
“There’s only one way to ensure Gia wins,” Lucco said.
Still, Gia’s stringer hesitated. Lucco pushed the wax and the vial toward her again. Finally, the girl reached out, took them, and rushed for the door.
Legacy, Pippa, and Javi flattened themselves against the stone wall of the corridor. Legacy held her breath. It was only thanks to the darkness in the passageway that Gia’s stringer dashed by them without noticing.
Once her footsteps had faded down the corridor, Legacy peered around the doorway again.
Now Lucco stood before the looms. He was facing the tapestry that depicted an enormous multicolored cat. He seemed to be speaking to the woven cat when suddenly a real cat leaped out of the fabric, hissed, and started running straight for the doorway.
With the cat on their heels, Legacy, Pippa, and Javi sprinted for the stairs. They stumbled down them, and ran as fast as they could back toward the infirmary, and they’d just rounded the corner when they collided with Argenti. His face was black with disapproval, and he was holding his cane over his head, as if ready to strike them.