From a Distance

Chapter 10

Tamara stood, her dark hair flying. Her parents clapped politely, as if they were at an opera. Tamara didn’t pause to hug either of them, just walked steadily to stand beside Aaron, who gave her a congratulatory smile.

Call wondered if it annoyed the other mages that Master Rufus got to pick first and went straight for the top of the list. It would have annoyed Call.

Master Rufus’s dark eyes raked over the room one more time. Call could feel the hush over everyone as they waited for Rufus to call out the next name. Jasper was already half out of his seat.

“And my last apprentice will be Callum Hunt,” Master Rufus said, and the bottom fell out of Call’s world.

There were a few surprised gasps from the other aspirants and confused muttering from the audience as each of them scanned the whiteboards for Call’s name and found it, absolutely dead last, with a negative score.

Call stared at Master Rufus. Master Rufus stared back, entirely blank. Next to him, Aaron was giving Call an encouraging smile while Tamara looked at him with an expression of total astonishment.

“I said Callum Hunt,” Master Rufus repeated. “Callum Hunt, please come down here.”

Call started to get up, but his father shoved him back down into his seat.

“Absolutely not,” Alastair Hunt said, standing. “This has gone far enough, Rufus. You can’t have him.”

Master Rufus was looking up at them as if there was no one else in the room. “Come now, Alastair, you know the rules as well as anyone. Stop making a fuss over something inevitable. The boy needs to be taught.”

Mages were ascending the bleachers on either side of where Call was sitting, his father holding him in place. The mages, in their black clothes, looked as sinister as his father had ever described them. They looked ready for battle. Once they reached Call’s row of benches, they stopped, waiting for his father’s first move.

Call’s dad had given up magic years ago; he had to be completely out of practice. There was no chance the other mages weren’t going to mop the floor with him.

“I’ll go,” he told his father, turning toward him. “Don’t worry. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ll get kicked out. They won’t want me for long and then I’ll come home and everything will be the same —”

“You don’t understand,” Call’s father said, hauling him to his feet with a clawlike grip. Everyone in the whole room was staring, and no wonder. His father looked unhinged, his eyes wide and bulging. “Come on. We’re going to have to run.”

“I can’t,” he reminded his father. But his father was beyond listening.

Call’s dad pulled him through the bleachers, hopping from bench to bench. People made way for them, dodging to one side or jumping up. The mages on the stairs rushed toward them. Call staggered along, focusing on keeping his balance as they descended.

As soon as they hit the floor of the hangar, Rufus stepped in front of Call’s father.

“Enough,” Master Rufus said. “The boy stays here.”

Call’s dad came to a jerking stop. He put his arms around Call from the back, which was weird — his father practically never hugged him, but this was more of a wrestling grip. Call’s leg was aching from their race through the bleachers. He tried to twist around to look at his father, but his dad was staring at Master Rufus. “Haven’t you killed enough of my family?” he demanded.

Master Rufus dropped his voice so that the mass of people sitting on the benches couldn’t hear them, though Aaron and Tamara obviously could. “You haven’t taught him anything,” he said. “An untrained mage wandering around is like a fault in the earth waiting to c***k open, and if he does c***k, he will kill a lot of other people as well as himself. So don’t talk to me about death.”

“Okay,” said Call’s father. “I’ll teach him myself. I’ll take him and I’ll teach him. I’ll get him ready for the First Gate.”

“You’ve had twelve years to teach him and you haven’t used them. I’m sorry, Alastair. This is how it has to be.”

“Look at his score — he shouldn’t qualify. He doesn’t want to qualify! Right, Call? Right?” Call’s father shook him as he said it. The boy couldn’t get any words out even if he’d wanted to.

“Let him go, Alastair,” said Master Rufus, his deep voice full of sadness.

“No,” Call’s father said. “He’s my child. I have rights. I decide his future.”

“No,” said Master Rufus. “You don’t.”

Call’s father jerked back, but not fast enough. Call felt arms grabbing at him as two mages wrenched him out of his dad’s grip. His father was shouting and Call was kicking and pulling, but it didn’t make a difference as he was dragged over to where Aaron and Tamara stood. They both looked absolutely horrified. Call flung a sharp elbow out at one of the mages who was holding him. He heard a grunt of pain, and his arm got jerked up behind his back. He winced and wondered what all the parents in the bleachers, here to send their kids to aerodynamics school, were thinking now.

“Call!” His father was being restrained by two other mages. “Call, don’t listen to anything they say! They don’t know what they’re doing! They don’t know anything about you!” They were dragging Alastair toward the exit. Call couldn’t believe what was happening.

Suddenly, something glinted in the air. He hadn’t seen his dad’s arm pull free from the mages’ grip, but it must have. A dagger now soared toward him. It flew straight and true, farther than a dagger should be able to go. Call couldn’t take his eyes off it as it whirled at him, blade first.

He knew he should do something.

He knew he had to get out of the way.

But somehow he couldn’t.

His feet felt rooted to the spot.

The blade stopped inches from Call, plucked out of the air by Aaron as easily as if he were plucking an apple off the low-hanging branch of a tree.

Everyone was still for a moment, staring. Call’s father had been pulled through the far doors of the hangar by the mages. He was gone.

“Here,” said a voice at Call’s elbow. It was Aaron, holding out the dagger. It wasn’t anything Call had ever seen before. It was a glinting silver color, with whorls and scrolls in the metal. The hilt was shaped like a bird with its wings outspread. The word Semiramis was etched along the blade in an ornate script.

“I guess this is yours, right?” Aaron said.

“Thanks,” said Call, taking the dagger.

“That was your father?” Tamara asked under her breath, without turning her face toward him. Her voice was full of cool disapproval.

Some of the mages were looking over at Call like they thought he was crazy and they could see how he got to be that way. He felt better with the dagger in his hand, even if the only thing he’d ever used a knife for was spreading peanut butter or cutting up steak. “Yeah,” Call told her. “He wants me to be safe.”

Master Rufus nodded to Master Milagros and she stepped forward.

“We’re very sorry for that disruption. We appreciate that you all remained in your seats and stayed calm,” she said. “We hope that the ceremony will proceed without any further delays. I will be selecting my apprentices next.”

The crowd quieted again.

“I have chosen five,” said Master Milagros. “The first will be Jasper deWinter. Jasper, please come down and stand by me.”

Jasper rose and walked to his place beside Master Milagros, with a single hateful look in Call’s direction.

THE SUN WAS beginning to set by the time all the Masters had picked their apprentices. Lots of kids had gone away crying, including, to Call’s satisfaction, Kylie. He would have traded places with her in a second, but since that wasn’t allowed, at least he got to really annoy her by being forced to stay. It was the only perk he could think of, and as the time to leave for the Magisterium drew closer, he was clinging to any comfort.

Call’s father’s warnings about the Magisterium had always been frustratingly vague. As Call stood there, singed and b****y and soaked with blue ink, his leg hurting more and more, he had nothing to do but go back over those warnings in his mind. The mages don’t care about anyone or anything except advancing their studies. They steal children from their families. They are monsters. They experiment on children. They are the reason your mother is dead.

Aaron tried to make conversation with Call, but Call didn’t feel like talking. He played with the hilt of the dagger, which he had stuck through his belt, and tried to look frightening. Eventually, Aaron gave up and started to chat with Tamara. She knew a lot about the Magisterium from an older sister who, according to Tamara, was the best at absolutely every single thing at the school. Troublingly, Tamara was vowing to be even better. Aaron seemed happy just to be going to magic school.

Call wondered if he should warn them. Then he remembered the horrified tone in Tamara’s voice when she’d seen who his father was. Forget it, he thought. They could get eaten by wyverns traveling at twenty miles an hour and bent on revenge for all he cared.

Finally, the ceremony was over, and everyone was herded out into the parking lot. Parents tearfully hugged and kissed their kids good-bye, loading them down with suitcases and duffel bags and care packages. Call stood around with his hands in his pockets. Not only was his dad not there to say good-bye to him, but Call didn’t have any luggage, either. After a few days with no change of clothes, he was going to smell even worse than he did now.

Two yellow school buses were waiting, and the mages began to divide the students into groups according to their Masters. Each bus carried several groups. Master Rufus’s apprentices were put with Master Milagros’s, Master Rockmaple’s, and Master Lemuel’s.

As Call waited, Jasper walked up to him. His bags were as expensive-looking as his clothes, with initials — JDW — monogrammed onto the leather. He had a sneer plastered on his face as he looked at Call.

“That spot in Master Rufus’s group,” Jasper said. “That was my spot. And you took it.”

Although it should have made him happy to annoy Jasper, Call was tired of people acting like getting picked by Rufus was some great honor. “Look, I didn’t do anything to make it happen. I didn’t even mean to get picked at all, okay? I don’t want to be here.”

Jasper was shaking with rage. Up close, Call saw with bemusement that his bag, though fancy, had holes in the leather that had been carefully and repeatedly patched. Jasper’s cuffs were an inch or so too short, too, Call realized, as if his clothes were hand-me-downs, or he’d almost grown out of them. Call bet that even his name was a hand-me-down, to match the monogram.

Maybe his family used to have money, but it didn’t seem like they had it anymore.

“You’re a liar,” Jasper said desperately. “You did something. Nobody winds up getting picked by the most prestigious Master at the Magisterium by accident, so you can forget trying to fool me. When we get to school, I’m going to make it my mission to get that spot back. You’re going to be begging to go home.”

“Wait,” Call said. “If you beg, they let you go home?”

Jasper stared at Call as if he’d just spouted off a bunch of sentences in Babylonian. “You have no idea how important this is,” he said, gripping the handle of his bag so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “No idea. I can’t even stand to be on the same bus as you.” He spun away from Call, marching toward the other Masters.

Call had always hated the school bus. He never knew who to sit next to, because he’d never had a friend along the route — or any friend, really. Other kids thought he was weird. Even during the Trial, even among people who wanted to be mages, he seemed to stand out as strange. On this bus, at least, there was enough space that he got a row of seats to himself. The fact that I smell like burning tires probably has something to do with that, he thought. But it was still a relief. All he wanted was to be left alone to think about what had just happened. He wished his dad had gotten him a phone when he’d begged on his last birthday. He just wanted to hear his father’s voice. He just wanted his last memory of his dad not to be of him being dragged away screaming. All he wanted to know was what to do next.