“You seek the one who freed Automotones and Skelmis, yes?” Marcus asked. “The one who is trying to kill Callum? For they are one and the same.”
“We knew that,” Aaron said. “Tell us who it is.”
“An answer you will not like.” Marcus grinned a flaming grin. “It is the greatest Makar of your generation.”
Tamara looked even more stricken. “Aaron’s trying to kill Call?”
Call felt the words like all the air went out of the room. Aaron couldn’t be the spy. But hearing Marcus’s words, Call felt stupid. They were fated to be enemies. Aaron was fated to be the hero and Call was fated to be the villain. It was as simple as that. Call had never had friends like Aaron and Tamara before, and sometimes he wondered why they liked him. Maybe the answer was simple. Maybe Aaron wasn’t actually his friend.
“No!” Aaron said, throwing his arms wide in a gesture that nearly put out the flame in his torch. “Obviously I’m not!”
“So I’m trying to kill myself?” Call asked Aaron, unable to stop from blurting out what he was thinking. “That makes no sense. Also, there’s no way anyone thinks I’m the greatest Makar of my generation.”
“You don’t really think that I want to hurt you, do you?” Aaron demanded. “After everything — everything — I learned about you and had to accept —”
“Maybe you didn’t accept it!” Call said.
“That chandelier almost hit me, too!” Aaron yelled.
“Free me,” Ravan said to Tamara, her face pressed against the bars. “Free both of us and we’ll help you. You know me. I might be a different creature now, but I am still your sister. I miss you. Let me show you what I can do.”
“You want to help us?” Aaron said. “Get Marcus to tell them I’m not the spy!”
“Everyone calm down!” Tamara said, turning her gaze on the Devoured Master and then toward her sister. “We don’t know how much of any of this is true. Maybe Marcus is making this up. Maybe he just wants what every elemental down here wants — a ticket out.”
“Is that all you think I want?” Ravan put her hand on her hip. “You think you’re so great, Tamara, but you’re just like Dad. You think that because you break the rules and get away with it, you can sit in judgment of everyone who gets caught.” And with that, she let the flame overtake her, becoming a flaming pillar and falling backward into fire.
“No, wait!” Tamara said, rushing over to her sister’s prison, hands grabbing the hot bars and holding on for a desperate moment, even though when she released them Call could see the pink skin on her palms where she’d burned them. “I didn’t mean it! Come back!”
The fire leaped around, but it didn’t coalesce into any human form. If Ravan was still there, they couldn’t pick her out of the rest of the dancing flames.
“I know you won’t release me, little apprentices, not yet — although I could teach you much. I taught Rufus well, didn’t I?” There was something hungry in Marcus’s gaze that made it hard to look directly at his face. “Well and yet not well enough. He doesn’t see what’s right under his nose.”
His gaze was fixed on Call. Call flinched. He couldn’t look at Tamara and Aaron. He stared at Marcus. “You’ve been at the Magisterium a long time,” he said.
“Long enough,” said Marcus.
“So did you know Constantine? The Enemy?”
“Whose enemy?” Marcus said with contempt. “Not mine. Yes, I knew Constantine Madden. I warned him, just like I warned you. And he ignored me, just as you have ignored me.” He smirked at Call. “It is unusual to see the same soul twice.”
“But he wasn’t like me, was he?” Call said. “I mean, we’re completely different, aren’t we?”
Marcus just smiled his hungry smile and sank down into the flames.
THEY’D ALMOST MADE it back out into the hallway when the Masters burst into the guardroom, magic blazing in their hands. They were wild-eyed, ready to fight. At the sight of Tamara, Aaron, and Call, the crackling ball of white energy hovering in front of Master North slipped and crashed to the ground in a shower of sparks.
“Apprentices?” he demanded. “What are you doing here? Explain yourselves!”
Master Rufus strode forward, grabbing Aaron’s collar in one hand and Call’s in the other. “Of all the reckless, ridiculous things you have ever done — this one, this one is the worst! You have put not just yourselves, but the entire Magisterium, in danger.”
Tamara, not yet being hauled along by Master Rufus, dared to speak. “We thought one of the elementals might know who let Skelmis out. I know you made us promise not to investigate, but that was before Call was attacked!”
Master Rufus turned a look on her that Call worried might actually scorch skin. “And so you broke into an Assembly member’s room and stole property from her locked safe? Property that could then be stolen from you? Did you consider that?”
“Uh,” Tamara said, having no good answer.
“Oh, don’t be too hard on them,” Anastasia said, her voice cool as ever. She had to know they’d found her photographs and guessed her password, but she appeared entirely unruffled, as though she had nothing at all to feel guilty about or to fear. “It’s difficult to feel powerless when someone is hunting you. And they’re heroes, after all. It must be twice as hard for heroes.”
Master Rufus twitched at the word hunting but didn’t loosen his grip on Call or Aaron.
Tamara was watching Anastasia. Call could tell she was tempted to say something about what they’d found in her room, but it was difficult to go against the one person on your side. Besides, she was still reeling from having seen her sister, locked up like just another elemental.
“We can’t let this slide,” Master North said. “Discipline is important for apprentices and for mages in general. We’re going to have to punish them.”
Anastasia’s chilly hand patted Call’s cheek. He felt vaguely frostbitten. “Tomorrow is soon enough, surely,” she said. “I’m the wronged party, after all. I ought to have some say.”
“I will personally escort these three back to their rooms,” Master Rufus said. “Now.”