‘What are we doing here?’ Reichis asked as we stood outside the tall central tower of the Academy.
It had taken me several hours to follow the threads out of the deep forest into town and finally back to this place. Most of the time I couldn’t see the threads at all, but then if I stopped and whispered my need, the sasutzei spirit in my right eye would give me another brief glimpse of them. I counted more than a dozen of the black gossamer filaments leading here.
‘What could Dexan’s clients possibly want with the Academy?’ I asked aloud.
Reichis clambered up my leg, then leaped up to perch on my shoulder. ‘Maybe they want to shut it down. Though why not just kill Beren instead of wasting time infecting a bunch of dumb kids?’
‘The people who come to study here aren’t dumb,’ I said somewhat defensively as I thought back to Cressia, Lindy, Toller and the others. ‘They’re smart and ambitious. They come from some of the …’
Reichis poked at my cheek with his paw. ‘What? What is it?’
I’d been about to say that the students here came from the best families from across the continent, but that wasn’t precisely true; what their families had in common was that they were all rich and influential. Daroman courtiers, Berabesq clerics, Gitabrian merchants … ‘Ancestors … I had it backwards: the Academy isn’t where the threads lead, it’s where they begin.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Reichis asked.
A bell chimed and sound erupted from inside the massive tower. Soon hundreds of students would come rushing out, off to wherever it was students went after class hours. Some of them would have the obsidian worms buried inside their eyes and not even know it, attributing their symptoms to a passing fever, unaware of what now lived inside them.
Poor Beren. He’d built this place to be a beacon of hope and peace – a place where children from all over the continent would come not just to study their chosen subjects but to learn about the Seven Sands and its people, to find common ground with them and maybe one day support their bid for sovereignty when they returned to their own countries. But whoever Dexan was working for meant for the students to take something else home with them. ‘Tyne kept saying that whenever he had an attack someone was listening to him, but I think what he really meant was that they were listening through him.’
‘So Dexan could use the worms to spy on the families of the victims even in their own homes?’ Reichis let out a whistling sound through his teeth. ‘You could do a lot with all that information.’
I nodded. ‘It gets worse. Remember how they used Revian as an anchor? They cast those ember spells through him, even though that entire house was protected with copper and silver wards.’
‘So the kids whose worms are hidden by Dexan’s spell … when they go back to their own countries …’
‘They’ll become spies on their own people. Maybe even assassins.’
Reichis gave a low growl. ‘So what do we do?’
‘The bracelet – the one Dexan made when he put the worm inside Ferius – he must have others, one for each victim. If we can find his real hideout, we can get the bracelets and destroy them so that he can’t use the worms any more.’
‘Okay,’ Reichis said. ‘But he’s been smart enough to keep his lair hidden from us so far.’
I let my need rise up inside me again, and whispered to the sasutzei spirit in my right eye, pleading with her for guidance. This is what my life had come to: I was now begging my own eyeballs for help, and even that didn’t feel strange. The strands from the obsidian worms appeared before me again, but I could see many of them glistening brighter, all leading in same direction. ‘I think I can track him now.’
‘Great, so then we just need to somehow get past a crocodile to beat a guy who just kicked our asses so badly that the only reason we aren’t dead is because he didn’t care enough to kill us.’
I shook my head. ‘Last time I did it wrong. I tried to beat him at magic, but he’s too strong for me.’
‘So then what?’
I grinned down at the squirrel cat. ‘How do you feel about a little burglary job?’
We followed the glistening black threads that the sasutzei revealed to us to a set of caves hidden in the hills outside of town. It made sense, now that I was there: those caves were probably where he’d found the onyx he needed for the bracelets. They probably also had a lot of iron deposits, which would make it hard for hextrackers to find him here. Then again, since they already had, it no longer mattered how well hidden he was.
Reichis and I crept up the path and then all around the caves that led into Dexan’s home until we were sure we’d accounted for all the possible entrances and exits.
‘Ready, partner?’ I asked as we prepared to go in.
He hopped up on my shoulder. ‘You know, Kellen, I’m pretty sure you’re about to get us killed in a bid to save Ferius and a bunch of strangers even though the odds are terrible.’
‘Yeah? So what?’
I felt something odd and furry against my cheek. Reichis – Reichis – was nuzzling me. ‘So I’m starting to think that maybe you’re all right, kid.’