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  But his high-pitched scream of pain a moment later alerted everyone to the fact that something had just happened.

  He staggered backward into the wall, holding his injured hand by the wrist, uttering girlish, inarticulate shrieks at the top of his lungs. Abi saw with a feeling of deep satisfaction that the little finger of his right hand was now bent backward at a right-angle to the rest of his hand. While some of the others paused to gape, she just made her way out of the door and down the hall to the next class as if nothing had happened. By this time, of course, the screaming attracted attention from the hall as well, and more people crowded around the door behind her. By virtue of all the attention her would-be tormentor had attracted, the room she ducked into was virtually empty, and she found a good seat at the front and to the farthest right.

  The instructor for this class was already there, and he raised an interrogative eyebrow at her. “I assume you’re Abidela. Aren’t you curious what all the caterwauling is about?” he asked.

  “Not really,” she replied with studied indifference, as she willed her heart to slow and her emotions to cool down. “I believe some fool was engaged in horseplay, doing something stupid, and got himself hurt. I’m not a Healer, so it’s none of my business.”

  The other eyebrow joined the first as the instructor pondered what she had just said—and the very careful wording. She had not lied. Some fool had done something very stupid, and the result was he’d gotten himself hurt.

  Outside in the hall, the screaming faded to a whimper, then to nothing; the other students filed into the classroom. Abi noted that as far as she could tell, the makeup of this class was the same as the last, and as the last of them took his seat, the instructor got down to the business of teaching them geometry.

  The third class of the morning added a couple of Herald Trainees to the mix; Abi vaguely knew them, and they gave her quick nods of recognition as they took their seats. Then it was time for lunch. She thought about approaching one or more of her classmates—but no. Not just yet, anyway. Let them get used to me, to the idea of me being one of them. Maybe let some of them come to me first.

  Besides, she was starving. She spotted Kat and Trey immediately when she entered the dining hall; they spotted her at the same time, and waved at her. She wove her way through the crowd, and found herself sandwiched between them, being plied with food and what was evidently a burning question.

  “Did you really break Dudley Remp’s finger?” Kat asked, half laughing as she passed Abi the bowl of cooked cabbage and bacon.

  “If he’s a particularly repugnant blond bully who likes to put his hands where they shouldn’t be, yes,” she said tightly, willing herself not to give in to the anger she really wanted to feel. “Good luck him proving it, though. No one saw me. Or him, for that matter. He took advantage of the crowd at the door to make a grab for my chest. I did the same to apply Master Leandro’s little-finger hold—and then I went all the way with it.” She gave both of them a warning look. “If anyone but a teacher or a Herald asks, though, you don’t know anything. And if anyone but a Herald asks me, I’m going to say there was a lot of jostling, I thought I felt someone pawing my chest, and I swatted the hand away and didn’t think anything more about it. Accidents happen in crowds.” She helped herself to pickled beets. “And he’s lucky he didn’t try to grab for anything lower. I’d have broken his whole gods-bedamned hand for him, and the wrist with it.”

  Kat stuffed her hand into her mouth to keep from laughing. Trey, however, looked serious. “Master Remp is very wealthy,” he said, with a warning tone in his voice. “And what he wants, he generally gets. He owns a lot of property in Haven, and he rents it out, then lends the money he gets to powerful people. That’s where he gets his fortune.”

  But Kat snorted. “He’s a skinflinted landlord is what he is,” she said. “He may own a lot of property, but most of it is in the poorest parts of Haven, where he’ll neglect his buildings, knowing that if he doesn’t make repairs, eventually the tenants will do it for him for free.”

  “Hmm,” Abi replied, wondering why on earth such a man would have enrolled his son in the Artificer building classes. “Well, that doesn’t give him any power here on the Hill. At least, not against someone like me.”

  “Don’t count on that, and don’t count on him not making trouble for you,” Trey warned again. “He can try to get you expelled.”

  But while Trey had been talking, Abi had already come up with a plan.

  The only question in her mind was, would she have to use it?

  * * *

  • • •

  Abidela was not startled by the tap on her shoulder from behind as she left her last class. She’d been perfectly aware of the Guard’s approach through the hall, even though he’d done his best to remain unobtrusive. “Abidela?” he said, sounding apologetic. “I’m afraid you will have to come with me. Someone has lodged a serious charge against you that requires answering.”

  It was a young man she vaguely knew from the rotations of Guards on the Royal Suite. Which made sense, whoever wanted her would have sent someone who knew her on sight.

  She shrugged. “All right,” she said agreeably, but she said nothing more. When the Guard didn’t get any further response from her, he motioned to her to follow and took her from Heralds’ Collegium, where the classes had been, into the administrative area of the Palace, to a hall full of offices. As she had expected, waiting for her were a red-faced, hand-bandaged Dudley Remp, an older, hard-visaged man who was probably his father, and behind a big desk, someone she didn’t recognize, probably whoever was in charge of the Artificers. It was a larger office, which suggested this man was important enough to be the equivalent of the Dean of Heralds or Healers. There was more than enough room for the three people currently in it and a chair waiting for one more—her, she supposed.

  “That’s her!” Dudley blurted, jumping to his feet and pointing, as soon as she came in. “That’s the bitch that broke my finger! I want her beaten! I want her beaten and thrown out, Master Ketnar! Right now!”

  Anger brought with it energy, but she schooled herself not to show it. It looked as if she was going to have to implement her plan after all.

  “I demand Truth Spell,” she snapped, instantly, before anyone could say anything else. “As the accused, I am entitled to demand Truth Spell. On both of us. We’re here at the Collegium, there are literally dozens of Heralds and Trainees that can do it at a moment’s notice. I demand it now.”

  And with that, to demonstrate that she had no intention of saying anything until a Herald turned up, she picked up the empty chair, moved it as far from Dudley and his father as possible, and sat down in it with her arms crossed over her chest.

  Dudley went from red to pale in an instant, though his father apparently was not bright enough to figure out that someone who demanded a Truth Spell was probably innocent. “This is nonsense. My son has been injured. I demand—”

  But the Artificer cut him off. “She’s within her rights,” he agreed and motioned to the Guard. “Go find me a Herald that can—”

  “Actually, sir, there is at least one, and possibly two of them on the way now,” the Guard said apologetically. “You sent Greer after them. They’re her parents.” And within moments after he finished that sentence, Mags turned up at the door.

  “I’m Herald Mags. Abidela is my daughter,” he said, wearing that expression that Abi knew so well, the one that made him look amiable, but stupid. “What’s all this about her being in trouble?”

  At first, Remp the Elder protested that having the accused’s father implementing the Truth Spell was—

  Well, he wasn’t allowed to continue. Master Ketnar frostily asked him if he was actually questioning the impartiality of a Herald. At that point Remp finally realized how dangerous the ground he was treading on was and shut up. Explanations were given which Abi didn’t pay any attention
to and didn’t contribute to. What she was concentrating on were Dudley and his father.

  Dudley’s hair had started to clump as he sweated nervously. Clearly he hadn’t thought this through at all.

  Neither had his father, who had expected that money would buy him what he wanted, since it always had before. The difference between them, however, was that the father was concentrating on punishing Abi for hurting his son, regardless of his son’s innocence or guilt. Whereas Dudley already knew he was guilty, and realized he was about to be caught red-handed.

  Mags nodded when the Artificer had finished. “Well, then,” he said. “Best that we get all the truth out at once, eh? Coercive Truth Spell it is. And just to be fair, I’ll put it on Abi first.”

  Dudley, strangely, looked relieved at that. For a moment, Abi was puzzled as to why—but then she realized that he thought that what her father would do was ask “Did you break Dudley’s finger?” and of course she’d be forced to admit she had, and Dudley would get what he wanted. She came very near to laughing at that moment, as she felt the Truth Spell settle about her. She faced her father, fearless and relaxed.

  Because, of course, her father was a master at asking exactly the right questions. The very ones Dudley didn’t want asked.

  And that was precisely what he did.

  “What happened this morning as you left Master Morell’s class?” he asked calmly. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dudley start as if someone had stuck him with a pin and start to sweat again.

  “Two of the big fellows that had been up at the front of the class with Dudley got me pinned me between them in the scuffle to get out the door,” she said, feeling absolutely nothing, because, of course, she had no reason to try to fight the Truth Spell. “Besides pinning me between them, they were trying to hide me from Master Morell. Dudley tried to assault me with intent to hurt. I grabbed his hand in that handa hold that Master Leandro taught us and broke his finger.”

  “There!” shouted Remp. “She admits it! She—”

  “Shut up, Remp!” Master Ketnar shouted. “She just accused your son of trying to assault her! Are you stupid as well as deaf?” As Remp stood there, mouth agape, Master Ketnar turned to her. “What do you mean by ‘assault,’ Abidela?” he asked, his tone crisp.

  “He tried to grab my breast,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I guess he thought no one would believe me if I said anything. I reckon he must get away with that a lot.”

  Anyone who didn’t know Mags would think that Abi’s words had meant nothing to him, but she saw the slow burn of anger in his eyes, though his mouth continued to smile and his tone never changed. “What made you think he was trying to grab you there?” he asked.

  “Well, the fact that he shoved right in front of his friend and lunged his hand at me, mostly,” she replied. “But just to be sure, I let him get within a finger-width of his goal before I grabbed his pinky, and to tell the truth, an awful lot of what made his finger break was his own lunging. Honestly if I hadn’t been pinned in by his friends, I’d have just stepped aside, stuck my foot out to trip him, and let him fall on his face, he’s that clumsy. I thought about letting him grab and then cracking him in the chin with the heel of my hand instead of breaking his finger, or crunching him in the family treasures with my knee, but from the way he came in, he intended to hurt me, and I didn’t want any bruises.”

  “Will that be enough, Master Ketnar?” Mags asked politely. Ketnar nodded.

  Abi didn’t feel any differently as her father turned away from her than she had when he’d put the Truth Spell on her, but that was the point. You weren’t supposed to feel anything as long as you’d made no effort to hide anything.

  “Now,” Mags said, and whether or not Dudley and his father heard the steel in the Herald’s voice, Abi did. “It’s time for Dudley.”

  Mags didn’t give them a chance to object, either. In less time than it took to snap her fingers, Abi saw Dudley surrounded by the bright blue glow of the Truth Spell—a glow that was invisible to those inside it but clearly visible to everyone else. Dudley’s carefully groomed hair lay plastered to his scalp with sweat, and drops of perspiration ran down his forehead.

  “Now, Dudley,” Mags said, voice soft and emotionless. “What did you tell your friends to do with Abi?”

  “I told them to get her pinned between them at the door, where Master couldn’t see her, like we did with Brice a couple of moons ago, so I could teach him a lesson too.” The words came freely, though from the contorted expression on Dudley’s face, he was trying with all his might to keep them from coming out of his mouth.

  “And what were you going to do to her?” Mags continued.

  “Grab her booby, give it a twist, and show her it’s best not to cross me,” said Dudley. “I knew nobody’d believe her. I do grab boobies all the time, to show girls who’s in charge of them, and nobody believes the girls. When you’re rich, you can do anything, and they just let you.”

  Well, this was a lot more than Abi had expected to come pouring out without a more careful examination by her father. She glanced at Master Ketnar, who was listening, slack-jawed with astonishment. She glanced at Dudley’s father—and quickly looked away. The man was in a white-hot rage. And she sensed it was not because of what his son had said but because his son had said it out loud.

  “I think that’s sufficient, Herald Mags,” Ketnar said, before Mags could think of another question—as if another question was actually going to be needed at this point. “Master Remp, I have no option but to expel your son. Not only did he attempt to assault a fellow student and lie about it, he confessed to assaulting another. Such behavior has no place here. Please take him and leave. You do, of course, have the option of hiring whatever Master Artificers you choose to tutor him, but he is no longer welcome here on the Hill, and I will instruct the Guard to escort him off if he attempts to pass the Gates in the unlikely event you are tendered an invitation that includes him.”

  Remp grabbed Dudley by the upper arm and hauled him bodily out of the room. They had barely cleared the door when the crack of flesh on flesh rang through the hall, there was the sound of a heavy body hitting the wall, and angry whispers. Abi winced. But neither of the adults said or did anything as the sound of two sets of feet, one stumbling, retreated down the hall and, presumably, out of the building.

  Now Mags turned to face Master Ketnar, his true feelings showing in his expression. “What kind uv a school are you runnin’ here, Ketnar, when a pig like thet c’n run roughshod over weaker students an’ get away with ’t?” he stormed, his cultured manner completely gone as he reverted to the dialect of his childhood in his anger. “I’ve more’n half a mind t’ take all this t’ th’ King his own self and git you and yer Masters thrown outa here! We c’n find other tutors fer th’ classes they was teachin’ here at th’ Collegia!”

  But Master Ketnar stood firm in the face of her father’s controlled anger, and he answered it with calm and regret. “You have no reason to believe me, Herald Mags, but I swear to you, there has never been a problem here like this before. But I’ll tell you this much—I am going to think twice and three times before I let someone with more money than ethics talk me into accepting his child in the Artificers college again! Those two friends that Dudley mentioned? They’re going to be expelled as well as soon as I can find out from Morell who they are and summon them here.”

  Now he turned to Abi, to her surprise. “Abidela, I apologize for all of this, and I’d like to know what you want. After all, you are the injured party in this entire matter.”

  Abi thought about it for a long while. Truth to tell, she didn’t have a hot temper, and her anger had cooled the moment her father had turned up. “I’d like to stay in the classes,” she said, at last. “It’s not as if something like this has happened before that they knew of, so I’d like things to stay the same for the Artificers up here.”

  �
�I’m perfectly willing for you to invoke the Truth Spell on me or any of my instructors, Herald,” Master Ketnar said with immense dignity. Mags nodded.

  Abi continued. “I’d like it if you expel those other two bullies, Master Ketnar, and I think you’re going to make sure that no one like them gets in again. And right now, I’d like to go home and start my studying for tomorrow.”

  Master Ketnar looked at her father. Mags shrugged. “If that’s what ye want—”

  She nodded. “That’s what I want,” she assured him, then gave him a tight smile. “If I let one stupid lout run me off of something I want to do, I’m not my father’s daughter.”

  Mags barked a tiny, surprised laugh. She took that as a good sign and left the office.

  Let them work out whatever they were going to work out. She had studying to do.

  3

  “Well, what are we going to do with you?” Healer Sanje asked rhetorically. At least Abi assumed the question was rhetorical, since she had no idea how to answer it.

  They were in a green-tiled examination and treatment room in the part of Healers’ Collegium devoted to the sick and injured. Abi could not imagine how the Healers managed it, but somehow the atmosphere in here was welcoming and comforting, not cold and sterile, or ominous.

  The Healer took Abi’s chin in her hand and tilted Abi’s face up to catch the light, looking deeply—and somewhat creepily—into Abi’s eyes. No one had ever looked so intently at Abi before, not even her parents, and she found herself repressing the urge to squirm and look away.