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

heat.
    “Don’t worry, newniks, I’m not going to make you climb all the way to the top level. That’s reserved for Hexmagic Duelists, of which there are exactly three right now. You grubs get the first floor, in here.”
    Taban led them through another pair of doors. They entered a large, circular common room with a ring of bunk beds. A low, grated area in the center radiated heat, and Calder froze entirely.
    Bayan looked closely at it. “That heat’s not made by fire,” he said, both for Calder’s benefit and for his own. “What’s making the heat?”
    Calder stepped behind Bayan and looked curiously over his shoulder.
    Taban snorted. “Newniks. Wouldna know magic if it bit you on the arse. One of the Avatar Duelists comes down from level three—that’s one above me, on the hex level—and heats the stone block with his Flame avatar. It’s good Idling practice for him, and it keeps you poor newniks from freezing to death before you can learn to be useful.”
    Bayan looked around the room at the other trainees. There were less than a score of them, though there were bunks for twice that.
    “I thought the classes always started when there were thirty-six trainees,” Bayan said.
    “They do. But the Headmaster never knows how many will be boys and how many will be girls. Also, the newnik classes drag on and on until the instructors are sure everyone is smart enough to pass. Or too stupid to pass no matter how long they wait. So it’s happened now and again that there will be two classes in here at the same time. Now quit pestering me, newniks, and go find somewhere to make your little nests and sleep. You’ll need it, and I’ve more important things to be doing.”
    Taban left. Calder stared at the hot stone block beneath the open grate. “I canna decide whether it scares me or not,” he confessed in a whisper.
    “Then it doesn’t scare you.” Bayan thought back to the vagary attack, and how his fear had completely consumed him. “When you’re scared, it’s all you can think about.”
    Calder nodded. “Makes sense to me,” he said, though his voice was faint. “Besides, I need to live in here for the next while, don’t I?” He looked away from the hot block. “Where do you want to bunk?”
    “With you.”
    Calder turned to him, looking pleasantly surprised.
    “I don’t know another soul in the empire proper. I’d rather stay around you—you can translate it all for me. I’ll pay you in food, of course.”
    Calder gave him a quick, lopsided grin. “Now you’re speaking my language!”
    “I… thought I always had been. Isn’t this Waarden?”
    Calder jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow and darted past him toward an unused set of bunks. “I call top bunk!” he cried. Bayan set his new clothes and his duffel from home on the sturdy blue quilt on the lower bunk. He found a spot for the pitcher’s pot on the top shelf of a small bedside stand.
    “Fine with me.” He started to put away his things. “Waarden beds are too high anyway.”
    That earned him a few dark looks from the other trainees. Calder leaned over the edge of the upper bunk and murmured, “Hsst, a word of advice? Don’t ever insult anything wisp. They think they’re the kitten’s whiskers at everything.”
    Bayan hadn’t considered that. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I did warn you I know nothing about imperial life.”
    “Aye, you did at that, but I dinna think you meant it!” Calder shook his upside-down head in apparent disappointment.
    Bayan turned back to his things, sorting out his own clothes onto the shelves next to his uniforms. He placed his shoes next to the edge of his bed, then bounced experimentally on the mattress. He still felt too high off the floor, but the bunk was better than most of the inn beds he’d slept in on the way there.
    Well, Father, I made it here. Now I guess it’s just a matter of seeing which rank I achieve, or whether I blow off a limb and have to stir potions until I