“He didn’t have to. Al the lower cohorts are saying you didn’t come back with a new student last night.”
Ariel’s friend nodded. David hunched his shoulders, apparently fascinated by the congealing eggs on his plate.
“They’re kids.” Lara kept her voice even with effort.
“They don’t know what they’re talking about. And neither do you.”
“Real y?” Ariel set her hands on her hips. “Then why did Master Zayin pul Gideon off lampwork?”
Lampwork—crafting beads with a torch from colored glass rods—was a coveted apprenticeship. The beads were imbued with power as wel as color, used not only for jewelry but for charms.
Lara bit her lip. If Gideon had been dismissed from spel work, no wonder he was upset. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. It’s probably only temporary.”
“You two better watch out,” Ariel said to David and Jacob.
“If Zayin finds out you’re hanging around with her, you could be reassigned, too.”
Jacob pushed back his chair. “That’s crap. Zayin’s not 74
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going to stop us from taming fire because your boyfriend screwed up.”
Ariel’s eyes glittered with moisture. “He didn’t. Take it back.”
“What is this, high school?”
“Gideon did his job,” Lara said quickly. “I’m the one responsible for . . . for the mission.”
An uncomfortable pause.
“That’s al right then,” David said. “I mean, you work for the headmaster.”
“Not anymore,” Ariel said with satisfaction.
Lara’s throat tightened.
“Lara? What’s she talking about?” Jacob asked.
“I hear your friend is in real y deep shit.” The girl with Ariel tittered. “Literal y.”
“She’s working in the bird house,” Ariel said with gleeful vindictiveness. “With Crazy Moon and the other cuckoos.”
“Oh, hey.” David’s good-natured face creased in sympathy.
“That sucks.”
Lara swal owed. “It’s only temporary,” she said again.
And heard Simon saying,
Her hands shredded her napkin in her lap. He would forgive her, eventual y. Everything could go back to normal.
If only she’d be quiet, if only she’d be good . . .
She stared down at the bright pattern of fruit on her plate, al appetite gone.
*
*
*
Dust motes danced in the diffused brightness of the raptor enclosure. Lara’s rake rattled over the gravel subfloor, F o r g o t t e n s e a 75 turning up broken bones and hardened pel ets, the remains of smal dead rodents, digested and undigested.
The big bird perched in the corner turned its wicked head, surveying her with a bright, suspicious eye.
Lara froze like a rabbit. Moon
But Moon was crazy. Everyone knew that.
As if summoned by the thought, the mews keeper appeared in the door of the cage. She was tal , like most of their kind, and striking, like al of them. But her wavy hippie hair was tied back with a leather jess, her strong, angular body swal owed by a shapeless brown tunic. Her blue eyes were cloudy and vague.
“When you’ve finished sweeping, you can scrub out his bath.” Moon flapped her hand at the metal pan weighted by an old tire in the middle of the cage.
Lara eyed the scummy water without enthusiasm.
Self-knowledge and obedience, she reminded herself.
She didn’t know what Simon expected her to learn in this dirty, shadowed hole. But she knew what she had to do.
“Okay.”
The keeper padded across the enclosure, her slippered feet silent on the newly raked floor. “There’s my lovely boy, then,” she crooned to the bird. “You’re one of Simon’s girls, aren’t you?”
It took Lara a moment to realize Moon was speaking to her.
She flushed. “I work for him, if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t care if you dance for him naked,” the keeper said.
“But he found you.”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. I’m good with faces,” Moon said with satisfaction. “Better with birds, but stil , I remember. You came in here with your class, a dozen years ago.”
Lara’s heart beat faster at the memory. Bria had made 76
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her stay behind in the shadowed mews when the rest of their cohort had escaped to sunlight and safety. Her friend had been fascinated by the birds, their daggered feet, their cruel, curved beaks, their caged grace.
She shrugged to hide her discomfort. “Everyone comes once. It’s part of the life science unit.”
“But I remember you,” Moon said. “You were friends with that little blond girl. The flyer.”
Lara’s mouth jarred open. No one talked about the flyers.
Ever. After Bria ran away, it was as if the other girl had never been. Lara had grieved for her friend in silence and alone. “She was my roommate.”
Moon cocked her head. “Never came back.”
“No,” Lara whispered.
“I meant you.”
“Oh.” Lara fought an absurd urge to apologize. “No, I . . .”
“Most of them don’t,” Moon said frankly. “Unless they want to use the birds in the flight cages to practice spirit casting.”
