Magisterium by Jeff Hirsch Page A

Had he figured out how to bend the rules? Everything around her, everything she’d seen, said that he had. And yet still the idea seemed stuck at the edge of her mind, there but not there.
    “Glenn,” Aamon began. “Maybe it doesn’t matter what you do or don’t believe about me. Michael Sturges and his men nearly killed Kevin for that bracelet. He was ready to kill you. And I swear to you, if Garen Tom learns of it he’ll be just as willing to do the same.”
    Glenn looked up from the face of the bracelet. “Why?”
    Behind Aamon, the fire hit a pocket of air in one of the logs and it snapped loudly, sending a rain of coppery sparks onto the brick hearth.
    “For over a hundred years, the Magisterium and the Colloquium have stayed separate and at peace. The reason that’s been possible is that each side knows that any army that tried to cross over to the other’s territory would be helpless. Your weapons don’t work here. Our Affinity doesn’t work there. But this bracelet changes that. If Sturges possessed the technology that’s inside of it he could fill the sky with drones and take the Magisterium for himself. And if Garen Tom had it, or the Magistra? Then your home would be invaded by legions far stranger and more deadly than me.”
    Glenn tensed as Aamon reached out to her, but then she felt the warmth in his fingertips and the gray softness of his coat.
    “Believe or don’t,” he said. “But the bracelet has to be
    destroyed.”
    When Aamon drew his hand away, Glenn lifted the bracelet to catch the fire’s glow. It was beautiful in a way, sleek and simple like all of her father’s work. A wave of sadness came over her as she thought of her father, locked away in some Colloquium prison, his last memory of his daughter a betrayal. How could she take his greatest triumph and wipe it away?
    But Aamon was right. Given the option, the Colloquium would do anything to take back the land lost in the Rift. All their technology couldn’t fix the basic problem of overpopulation that came when almost half the world had been swept away.
    If destroying it left nothing for Sturges to pursue, then maybe it could get Dad his freedom. Maybe it could get Kevin and me our lives back.
    The bracelet’s metal was light for its size, a mottled gray.
    Materials were one of her father’s specialties and he used to lecture about them to her at length. Glenn guessed the shell was a mix of carbon fibers woven with titanium or even beryllium.
    “Simple tools couldn’t break it,” she said, and then glanced into the fire. “It could be melted down but it would take a fire a thousand times as hot as that.”
    “Perhaps …”
    “What?”
    “Bethany,” Aamon said. “It’s a blacksmithing town past the
    mountains. There are forges there that burn like you say.”
    “Fine,” Glenn said. “Kevin and I will go back. We’ll get him to a hospital. You can take this.”
    She dug her fingers beneath the bracelet and started to pull.
    “No!” Aamon’s hand shot out and clamped down on the bracelet before Glenn could strip it off, his claws pressing into her wrist. She felt like her hand had been bound in concrete.
    Glenn’s heart pounded as Aamon looked from the bracelet up to her. His expression was strange, frightening in a way she didn’t understand.
    “You can’t cross the border here,” he said. “Sturges will be watching. Bethany is farther north. Remote. It will be safer if you cross there. We’ll travel together. Once we arrive, I’ll take you both back across the border, then return with the bracelet and destroy it.”
    Aamon let Glenn go and moved away from her, back toward the fire. She drew her wrist to her chest. It was streaked with red and ached from where he held her.
    “Glenn,” he said. “I’m sorry I …”
    Behind her, Kevin moaned, tossing and turning on his wood
    pallet. Glenn took a damp cloth from the clay bowl next to him and wiped the sweat from his face and forehead. She could feel his