Rebel Elements (Seals of the Duelists) by Jasmine Giacomo Page A

airily, turning and leaving the Hall of Seals. He led them through the tunnel on the left, along the raised wooden walkway. Their footsteps echoed through the rocky cavern. “Boys’ barracks are through this tunnel; girls’ barracks are through the far tunnel. The central tunnel leads to more classrooms and the Chantery. All the arenas are accessible by either path or tunnel from any of these three areas. There’s other stuff around, like Peace Village, the meditation solitaries, and the sint caves, but you willna have any need for finding those alone.”
    “What’s in Peace Village?”
    “Villagers. History students, the cooks, laundresses, everyone who’s not got magic. We call everyone else in the empire villagers too. I’ll warn you now,” Taban continued, “in case you’ve got ideas about some girl you just saw back there. Absolutely no fraternizing of any sort on campus. That can get you expelled.”
    “What? Why?” Calder asked, so quickly that Bayan wondered if he already had his eye on a girl.
    “You’ll learn more about this in your meditation classes, but let me put it this way. Love can kill you if you’re a duelist—messes up your magic. The Academy can’t allow that, so there’s a no fratting rule which is strictly enforced. Don’t even try to get away with it. There’s nothing as embarrassing as being potioneered when you’ve still got all your limbs.”
    “What’s a potioneer?” Bayan asked.
    “An apothecary. What we become if we wash out of duelist school. I hear they use some ancient torture process to make duelists into potioneers.” He flashed a dark grin and stopped near the end of the tunnel. Behind him loomed a tall building similar in construction to the Hall of Seals, with stylized fingers on the corners.
    “Nobody gets out of being a servant of the empire until they’re dead.” Taban held up his fingers, ticking them as he spoke. “Either you’re an Elemental Duelist, an Avatar Duelist, a Trade Duelist—with time served—or if you’re very lucky, a Hexmagic Duelist. Or else you’re a potioneer, stuck making potions for the uncaring masses who every day look down on you, because they know that you could have been something greater. By imperial law, there are nae other options for us.
    “Most potioneers wash out of here because they blew off a limb, either in the arena or in an illegal duel. Chanters can only heal so much. Others crack, canna take the pressure. But some, the unluckiest of them all—they fall in love. So don’t let that happen to you. Those girls way over there in the other barracks, they’re just classmates, hexmates. They’re not lovemates. We don’t get those, not in this life.”
    Bayan was aghast. “What, never? Not even after we graduate?”
    Taban laughed. “Left someone back home, did we, Balang? Well, if you’re lucky enough to get assigned anywhere close to her, then aye, you can give it a try. But by then, you’ll probably have realized that if you had to choose love and death or solitude and life—and that’s exactly what you’ll be doing—you’d probably pick the solitude.”
    He continued onward, leading the silent new trainees down to a grassy sward surrounding the barracks. Though it was less bulky than the Hall of Seals, the barracks, built with its back wall near a sheer cliff of smooth, pale rock, was taller, dominating its tiny valley like a kalabao in a pen built for a goat. The only access to the building’s little vale was via the series of tunnels dotting the rock wall.
    This place is a maze, and a half-buried one at that. I can see why they built up here after getting sacked; the barracks seem impossible to penetrate.
    They entered through a pair of doors which opened upon a large, curving staircase and a wall-mounted water fountain in the foyer. Bayan instantly felt warmer in the heated building. Calder halted abruptly, though, and Bayan slowed down, wondering if Calder was having a reaction to the