CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE BOOK OF MUSE

Stay put,” Argenti hissed, and pushed Legacy, Pippa, and Javi into the corner of the infirmary. Then he took a pot of wax from his pocket and sealed the crack under the door. He checked the window, pulled the drapes, and turned back to Legacy and Pippa and Javi.

He sighed. “The lengths I have to go to in order to keep the cats from spying,” he said.

Pippa made a small, weird whimpering noise.

“Calm down,” Argenti said. “You’ve had a fright.”

Then he sat on a cot and crossed one leg over the other. Red socks peeked out beneath his tweed trousers.

“The cat,” Legacy said. “It jumped out of the—”

“The tapestry?” Argenti said.

Legacy nodded.

Argenti sighed again. “Yes. That’s one of Lucco’s newer tricks. They gather information at the academy, then bring it back to him and Silla. They’re not real, of course. They’re made of threads.”

“But they look like—”

“Yes,” Argenti said. “They look like real cats.” He turned to Pippa. “Your father’s weaving techniques are extraordinarily lifelike.”

Javi was staring at Argenti. “But why—”

“To spy on the students,” Argenti said.

“They can talk?” Javi said.

“I admit that I’m not quite sure how it works,” Argenti said. “Obviously these new weaving techniques have been kept very quiet. One thing that is clear, however, is that the cats aren’t your typical house pets.”

“So let me get this straight,” Legacy said. “All the secret conversations we’ve had in my room, about planning to sneak up to the workshop, or planning to find the recipe for the secret stringbind—all those might have been reported by cats?”

“Reported to my father?” Pippa said.

“And—to Silla?” Javi said.

Argenti nodded.

Legacy felt her stomach drop. It couldn’t be true. Silla couldn’t be spying on her. It was Silla, after all, who had set up the provincial trials. Silla who had provided the scholarship that had allowed Legacy to attend the academy. Why would Silla spy on her? She remembered Silla watching her in the provincial trials. She remembered feeling as though Silla had locked eyes with her when she won. She’d believed that Silla believed in her. All this time, she’d imagined that Silla was behind her. All this time, no matter what disturbing events had occurred—a pyrus breathing fire down her neck, a cat slipping under a door, even the elites practicing Ancient Stringing Craft—Legacy had imagined that nothing really disastrous could happen. Not with Silla in charge. Silla the Queen. Silla the greatest champion in the republic, who stopped the Great Fire and united the people. But if Silla was part of a plot that the elites were hatching, a plot involving Ancient Stringing Craft . . . Suddenly the whole quest to win nationals and save Van didn’t just seem like a long shot. It was starting to seem like a death wish.

“So it’s Silla,” Legacy said, in a very small voice, “who’s behind all this?”

“And my father?” Pippa said. Her lower lip was trembling.

“Not just him,” Argenti said, tapping the floor with his cane for emphasis. “We’re all meant to assist her. Me, Lucco, Polroy. We’d be fired if we didn’t.”

Now he heaved himself up and went to the window. For a moment, he stood in silence, twisting his mustache. He looked even more dismayed than he had during grana class when Legacy couldn’t summon her inner weather.

“Of course Polroy’s a true believer,” he said. “He lost his family’s estate in the Great Fire. Now he truly believes that if we’re not governed by a ruler like Silla—one who inspires fear in her subjects—we’ll fall into disorder again. And your father, Pippa, was a true believer as well. But at this point I’ve come to suspect that he only follows Silla’s bidding to protect his family. I’ve tried to get through to him a few times, but he’s always resisted. He won’t risk your safety. Yours, or the safety of your mother, and your siblings at home. That’s why he’s always kept the rest of them far away from the palace. You’re the only one who insisted.”

“But why?” Legacy said. “Why would Silla want to bring back Ancient Stringing Craft? Why would she want to spy on her own students and keep me from winning nationals?”

“I wasn’t sure either,” Argenti said. “At least at first. It seemed to me that her power as high consul was consolidated enough. The people are grateful enough to keep imagining her in the high consul position for decades. Why, then, should she fool around with surveillance techniques? Why break her own dictates? But then I saw you,” he said, turning toward Legacy, “and I saw the resemblance.”

“Resemblance?” Javi said, peering at Legacy.

Pippa looked also. “Resemblance to whom?”

Legacy felt her face growing hot.

“Why, her resemblance to Amata,” Argenti said, furrowing his brow.

“Amata?” Legacy said. The name struck a chord somewhere within her. Then she remembered again sitting in the cart on her way into the city. She was surrounded by chickens and hay, and she was reading the book Van had slipped into her sack.

the inscription had read.

Argenti looked down at his hand on his cane. “You didn’t know,” he said in a quieter voice. Then he paused and turned back to the window. “Well, well. I’m sorry this is how you’re finding out.”

“Finding out what?” Legacy said.

Argenti turned and tapped the floor with his cane. “That Amata was your mother. And that she was Silla’s only sister.”

Legacy stared. Her father had only ever told her that he and her mother had started the orphanage a few months before Legacy was born. After three years, her mother left. Legacy had never been told anything about stringing. She’d never been told anything about Silla.

“Amata was Silla’s stringer,” Argenti went on. “This was back in the early days, when Silla was still a tennis champion. The Great Fire hadn’t yet started burning, and she hadn’t yet put it out. She hadn’t yet appeared in the Tapestry of Granity. She wasn’t high consul. She was still the Queen, and your mother wove her stringbinds. Your mother created the binds that allowed her—later—to summon that storm.

“Once Silla was elected,” Argenti went on, “she began to experiment with more methods for consolidating her power. Ostensibly, it was to end the violence in the republic started by the senators. She researched ancient techniques for prognosticating tapestries, and she asked Amata to weave one, in order to predict insurrections that might rise up in the future. It had been years since anyone had dared to tempt the gods’ wrath by weaving a prognosticating tapestry, but Amata agreed.”

Legacy’s eyes shot open wider. “The gods?” she said.

Argenti scowled at her. “You didn’t think we all just stopped believing overnight?”

Legacy bit her tongue. “Sorry,” she said. “Go on.”

“Your mother agreed,” Argenti continued. “She even started. You can see it still—it’s still up on one of the looms in Lucco’s workshop. Amata got as far as this academy, and then one day she simply stopped.”

Here Argenti tapped the floor with his cane for emphasis. His brows were pulled down low over his eyes, like black beetles. Legacy could see how fatal he believed Amata’s decision had been.

“She was pregnant,” he said, “at the time. And she wouldn’t continue. You can imagine how angry Silla was. It caused a great rift between them. Silla threatened to imprison her, but your mother simply wouldn’t sit at the loom. Finally, Silla banished her to the provinces.”

“I thought Silla’s sister died in the fire,” Pippa said.

“That’s what she said to the papers,” Argenti said. “In fact, no one knew what became of Amata. Somehow she even eluded the crackles.”

“The crackles?” Javi said.

“Thread crackles,” Argenti said, gesturing distractedly with his cane. “Silla’s spies in the provinces.”

Javi touched the brand on his neck. “That’s how she must keep tabs on families like mine,” he said.

Argenti sighed. “Yes,” he said, looking down and brushing off his tweed pant leg. “A shame about that. But unfortunately, after that incident with the prognosticating tapestry, Silla’s punishments for any insurrectionary behavior have become harsher and harsher.”

“She was afraid that Amata had seen an uprising?” Pippa said. “The ‘insurrectionary behavior’ she’d hoped to prevent?”

“Exactly,” Argenti said, nodding at Pippa in approval. “She was so afraid that—once she’d put out the Great Fire—she trained your father to continue with the tapestry. But his talents aren’t quite at Amata’s level. He could only proceed a little longer with the tapestry. Then the threads began to elude him. Still, by the time he finished, Silla had seen enough.”

“Something involving Legacy?” Pippa said.

“A girl,” Argenti said, “wearing the garb of the provinces. With a face just like her sister’s. Directly challenging Silla’s power as high consul.”

Legacy stood from the cot where she’d been sitting. She walked over to the stacks of athletic tape and began to pick at the edge of one roll with her fingernail to distract herself from the nerves that had begun to brew in her stomach.

“But why?” she said. “Why would I challenge Silla’s power? She’s the one who put out the Great Fire!”

“At first,” Argenti said, “I didn’t understand either. But prophecies have a way of fulfilling themselves. The more frightened Silla became of the girl who challenged her authority, the more she provided reason for such a girl to exist. She began spying. She changed the standard stringbind, heightening metium levels. That way, only fearful children—loyal children—could express grana. Those children, whose grana resonates with metium, became more and more successful. They are the champions who each year pledge their loyalty to Silla, reinforcing her power.”

“That stringbind,” Pippa said, “the one that Legacy started with—it wasn’t brown. It was rust red.”

“That’s the standard now,” Argenti said. “Thanks to your father and Silla. Of course, it’s a crime. Manipulating children through their stringbinds. Encouraging their fearfulness. Causing them to be unquestioningly loyal. Playing with a stringbind like that changes a child. It not only causes them to express fear, it strengthens their fear reflex. It builds their fear muscle. It alters their most essential selves.”

“A self disguised is a death surmised,” Legacy murmured, remembering the book of Cora stories.

Argenti nodded, surveying Legacy over his pronounced nose with a look that almost resembled approval. “As soon as you showed up at the trials,” he said, “and I saw the resemblance to Amata, I knew that Silla had set up your scholarship to lure you into the academy, where she could control you. I knew she’d attempt to manipulate you through your strings. That’s why I was so hard on you in grana class. I knew your grana would have to be exceptionally strong if you were going to resist her techniques.”

“But in the attic,” Legacy said, “we overheard you telling Polroy that I didn’t have any grana.”

“Even as I saw you improving,” Argenti said, “I tried to hide it from the other teachers. To keep them from strengthening their manipulation techniques. But even so—”

“That ‘standard bind,’” Pippa said. “The one we found on my father’s desk. It wasn’t standard.”

Argenti shook his head. His dark eyes grew even darker. “No,” he said.

“There was enough of a mix that Legacy could start to express grana fueled by anger,” Pippa said.

“But there wasn’t any corasite,” Javi said.

“So any grana-fueled anger I summoned,” Legacy said, “didn’t express outward. It just shot up my arm.”

Argenti nodded. “Silla must have decided that just keeping you from expressing wasn’t enough.”

“She had my father plant a recipe,” Pippa said.

“A recipe that could have killed me,” Legacy said.

Now Javi stood up. His face had darkened. He was glaring at Argenti.

“And you didn’t think you should tell us?” he said. “You knew all this, and you didn’t think you should warn us? Legacy could have died playing with that stringbind. We all could have died, flying around on that pyrus, looking for evidence of a crime you knew about all along.”

Argenti sighed. “I’m an old man. My position here is tenuous. I knew I couldn’t expose Silla alone. I was waiting for Legacy to show up. And, once she did, I was waiting for her to be ready. I wanted her grana to be strong enough to withstand Silla’s manipulations. Unfortunately, however, it seems that Silla has chosen now as the moment to act. It appears that she wants to use this tournament to eliminate any possibility of Legacy threatening her domination.”

“So that explains it,” Pippa whispered.

“It also explains what we saw on those secret courts,” Javi said.

“Secret courts?” Argenti said.

“We saw the elites practicing with Polroy,” Javi said. “Summoning grana that couldn’t have been possible with a standard bind.”

“Blizzards,” Legacy said. “Waist-high snowdrifts.”

For a moment, Argenti rested his head on the handle of his cane. When he looked up again, his face was tired.

“That’s what I feared,” he said. “But I didn’t know. It’s been some time since Silla trusted me. I’ve expressed my dissent one too many times. Once Silla started manipulating the standard stringbind, I knew we were only a step away from amplifying again. Or from allowing some students to amplify, and not allowing others.”

“But what do we do?” Legacy said. “How can we stop her?”

“You can’t oppose her outright,” Argenti said. “The people are all behind her. If you try to speak out now, you’ll be banished, and no one will challenge the decision. She’s Silla, high consul of Nova. She once put out the Great Fire. She once ended the wars. And you’re just an unknown from the provinces.”

“And I’m just the child of a thief,” Javi said.

“And I’m just a spoiled child of privilege,” Pippa said.

Argenti nodded wearily, looking down at his red socks.

“But if she wins the championships,” Javi said.

“If she summons more grana than anyone else,” Pippa said.

“If she plays better than any champion the country has ever seen,” Javi said.

“And if I don’t profess loyalty to Silla,” Legacy said.

All three of them looked at Argenti.

He pursed his lips. “It’s risky,” he said. “But I don’t see a better approach.”

Legacy turned toward Pippa. “Could you weave me a new stringbind?” she said. “One that would allow me to express without danger?”

“I could try,” Pippa said.

“Try? ” Javi said. “You’ve been talking about Ancient Stringing Craft since I came to the academy!”

“Yes,” Pippa said, “but in all the old books, they say to consult the ‘ingredient list’ for the proper mineral compounds. And I don’t know where we find the right ‘ingredient list.’”

“In the old days,” Argenti said, “before you were born, when Silla was still the Queen and Amata was her head stringer, each child at the academy was given a woven book, threaded with the old techniques. That way the book reflected the player’s emotional life. It generated recipes with the particular mineralogy necessary for that particular player. Chants and diagrams, as well. Anything that might help that player find her truest course. Each book could be read only by the child it was intended for, to prevent other players from tampering with the strings. That way, if that child disguised her inner weather too long, or expressed it untruly, she became alienated from her book. We called it a death in life. After that, the book became hard to read. Its pages faded. The threads began to unravel.”

“The Book of Muse,” Legacy said. She remembered Van’s note: Just thought this might be meant for you. Then she felt a strange pressure in her chest, as though a flower that had been tightly squeezed shut were beginning to open. It had been meant for her, to show her how to become a player who would challenge Silla’s domination. Her mother had known. She’d woven it for her. She’d given her that gift before leaving. “The Book of Muse, that’s what it was!”

Argenti looked at her sharply. “You have one?” he said.

“She must have made me one,” Legacy said. “My mother. Before she left—”

“That’s it, then!” Javi said. “All we have to do is find the recipe in the book!”

“But it’s faded,” Legacy said, her heart sinking into her stomach. “I can’t read it anymore. I can’t even read the inscription—”

“We have to try again,” Pippa said. “And this time no disguising yourself.”