The Bronze Key

Tamara saluted tiredly as Aaron headed off toward the door that led down to the showering and bathing pools. “You okay?” she asked Call as Aaron left.

“I guess,” Call said. “I don’t really understand why we’re safer in this room.”

“Because fewer people know we’re here,” Tamara said. The sentence was clipped, but she didn’t look angry at Call, just sort of tired. “Master Rufus must feel like there are very few people he can trust. Which means anyone could be the spy. Literally anyone.”

“Anastasia …” Call began, but then the door opened and Master Rufus came in. His smooth dark face was expressionless, but Call had started to be able to read the tension in his teacher’s posture, the set of his shoulders. Master Rufus was very tense indeed.

“Call,” he said. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Call glanced over at Tamara, who shrugged. “Anything you have to say, you can say in front of Tamara,” Call said.

Master Rufus was not amused. “Call, this isn’t a movie. Either you let me talk to you alone, or you’ll all be sorting sand for the next week.”

Tamara snorted. “That’s my cue for bedtime.” She got up, her dark braids swinging, and waved good-night to Call as she disappeared into her bedroom.

Master Rufus didn’t sit down. He just leaned his bulky frame against the side of the table. “Callum,” he said. “We know that someone with access to complex magic is after you. But what we don’t know is — why aren’t they going after Aaron?”

Call felt obscurely insulted. “I’m a Makar, too!”

A corner of Master Rufus’s mouth turned up, which didn’t make Call feel any better. “I suppose I might have put that differently. I don’t mean that you aren’t a valuable target, but it’s odd for someone to come after you exclusively, especially since Aaron has been a Makar longer. Why not attempt to kill you both?”

“Maybe they are,” Call said. “I mean, Aaron was around during both attempts. Maybe the elemental would have gone after him once it had finished with me.”

“And maybe the chandelier required a trigger before it fell and the assassin waited until Aaron was in the room … ?”

“Exactly,” Call said, relieved that Master Rufus had come up with that on his own. He didn’t like the sound of assassin, though. The word slithered around in his head, hissing like a snake. Assassin was much worse than spy.

Master Rufus frowned. “Maybe. But I think that ever since you arrived at the Magisterium, you’ve been keeping secrets. First your father’s, now maybe one of your own. If you know who is targeting you or why you’re being targeted, tell me so I can better protect you.”

Call tried not to goggle at Master Rufus. He doesn’t know about Captain Fishface, Call reminded himself. He’s just asking a question. Sweat started up on Call’s palms and under his arms anyway. He did his level best to keep his expression neutral; he wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“There’s nothing I’m not telling you,” Call said, lying as well as he knew how. “If someone is really trying to kill me instead of Aaron, I don’t know why.”

“Whoever it was had a way to get into your room,” Master Rufus said. “No one should be able to do that, except for you three and myself. And yet there was only one elemental waiting — the one on your ceiling.”

Call shuddered, but he didn’t say anything else. What could he say?

Master Rufus looked disappointed. “I wish that you believed you could trust me. I hope you understand how serious this all is.”

Call thought of Aaron and his weird not-quite-a-burn. He thought of the elemental and its terrible eyes, staring down at him through the dark, its claws sinking into his skin. He thought of the year before and all the things they’d never told Master Rufus about their failed quest to bring back the Alkahest. If he’d been a better person, he would have confessed to Master Rufus then and there. But if he’d been a better person, maybe there would never have been a problem in the first place.

“I don’t know anything. I don’t have any secrets,” Call told Master Rufus. “I’m an open book.”

THE NEXT FEW days passed uneventfully. Call didn’t like their new rooms, which felt more like a hotel than a place that belonged to them. Books, papers, and new clothes were brought to them by the mages — every time Call passed their old door, he saw that it was closed with an iron bar. He tried his bracelet on the lock, but it didn’t accomplish anything. He didn’t like the fact that Miri was locked in there, and so far he hadn’t gotten up the nerve to ask the mages to bring him his knife. Luckily, he’d managed to get Constantine Madden’s wristband out by virtue of wearing it above his own, shoved up under the sleeve of his uniform or his pajamas. He knew he should take it off, maybe even get rid of it, but he found that he was having a hard time with the idea of giving it up.

His dislike of the room got way worse when Tamara turned up a photograph, wedged under one corner of her bed. It was a picture of Drew, grinning at the person taking the picture, one arm slung around Master Joseph’s shoulders. Drew was young in the picture — maybe ten years old — and he didn’t look like the kind of person who could have tortured Aaron just for fun. And Master Joseph, in the photograph, looked like one of those older, professory dads who wanted their kids to read picture books in the original French. He didn’t look like a psycho who’d trained an even bigger psycho. He didn’t look like a guy who wanted to take over the world.

Call couldn’t stop looking at the photograph. It was ripped along one side, but an arm and part of a blue T-shirt showed there’d been another person with them. The shirt had black stripes on it. For a terrible moment, Call thought he might be looking at the arm of the Enemy of Death, before he remembered that Constantine Madden had to have died around the time Drew was born.

But it wasn’t just the newness of the room and the loss of Miri and the photograph that made Call uncomfortable. He didn’t like the way Master Rufus was looking at him nowadays either. He didn’t like the way that Tamara glanced nervously over her shoulder all the time. He didn’t like the new, worried frown line between Aaron’s eyebrows. And he especially didn’t like the way that none of his friends would let him out of their sight.