“Here’s wickedness.” One of the pair searching his clothes chest held up two of the knives that Briar had picked up on his journey to Winding Circle.
“Planning to murder us in our sleep and rob us all?” The leader’s finger stabbed forward, poking Briar rudely in the nose.
Quick as a flash, Briar lunged forward and bit down on the accusing finger. His victim screamed as he hung on. The pair holding him twisted his arms up behind his back. Briar got rid of one, kicking his knee till the boy collapsed. Releasing the leader’s finger, Briar smashed the other boy hanging onto him with the back of his skull. His victim fell back, his nose bleeding.
Dropping, Briar rolled away from the boys, one hand going to an ankle-sheath, the other going to one in an armpit. Lurching to his feet, he showed them his blades.
“Back up, bleaters, ‘less you want more mouth than you got,” he snarled.
Softness, like clouds, wrapped around his arms, pinning them to his sides. He couldn’t see it, but he felt it as it flowed down his legs. When it tightened, it snapped his feet together, knocking him off-balance. He fought it as he dropped, without result.
A foot rolled him over. He quieted, seeing who stood over him: a pair of dedicates. Both wore the yellow habit of the Air temple, which ran the dormitory, but the hem of the woman’s robe was lined in black.
“I knew what would happen when they let that guttersnipe in!” The male dedicate hauled Briar up by his shirt. “You’re out of this dormitory. If I have my way, you’re out of Winding Circle altogether.”
“What’ve you done to me?” Briar snarled as the woman tried to pry his knives from his fingers.
She smiled. “Don’t like the Shackles of Air, lad?” she asked. “Never saw this kind of magic before?”
Briar went still. Magic? But that’s fakery! he thought, shocked. Then he looked down at his body. Fakery he couldn’t see had glued his legs together and his arms to his sides. When the woman tugged again, he released his knives. The time to fight was over.
“He stole my cloak-pin!” cried his original accuser.
“It cost me three silver astrels!” If his friends noticed the change in price, they kept quiet about it.
Briar sighed. “And I told you, I won’t lower myself. There’s the bleater that nicked it.” He nodded toward the boy who had made fun of his plants. “It’s under his pillow.”
The boy he’d accused flinched. Two boys went to his bed and lifted his pillow. There was the stolen pin, as well as a few small treasures belonging to the other boys.
“He put them there!” cried the real thief. “He—he knew we were on his trail, and—and he put them on my bed!”
“Will you swear to that before a truthsayer?” asked the female dedicate. “One of the best is here visiting Honored Moonstream. I’d love to see the spells he uses.”
The thief swallowed hard and shook his head.
“Whatever else, I want him out of here,” the man holding Briar snapped. He shook the boy hard. “Knives have no place in a boys’ dormitory!”
“Depends on the dormitory,” muttered Briar. The invisible bonds around his legs vanished, and the two dedicates steered him roughly toward the door.
Tris Chandler leaned on the windowsill in Winding Circle’s administration building, glaring at the clouds. Through the closed door of the Dedicate Superior’s office, she heard Staghorn’s whine. The dedicate wanted her out of the girls’ dormitory.
Here I go again, Tris thought angrily. We don’t want you—move along.
Storm clouds rolled by, heavy with rain and thunder. Lightning danced in them, growing as it skipped from curve to curve, gaining strength with each bounce. She could almost smell its pale, cold scent;the hairs on her arms prickled with its closeness….
Crrracckkk!
The bolt struck ten feet away, crisping a sapling tree. The girl’s ears rang; every hair on her head stood upright. In the office, Staghorn shrieked in terror.
Tris smiled.
“Are you all right, Tris?” a light, familiar, male voice asked loudly. “You were looking right at it.”
Trying to get her wiry red curls to flatten, Tris ignored Niko.
“It’s curious to see lightning hit a small tree where there are tall ones, or buildings, at hand,” he added now.
Tris pushed her spectacles higher on her long nose and turned to glare at her former traveling companion. She had to lean back to do it; he was a foot and a half taller than her own four feet four inches. “What have buildings and trees to do with it?” she demanded.
“Lightning strikes what’s nearest the clouds,” he replied.
“Does it strike the Hub?” she asked, looking at the high tower next door to Administration.
“It has, but the Hub’s protected. There’s a rod on the clock tower, attached to a wire that runs into the ground. The lightning is drawn to the rod first, and the wire takes its fire into the soil, where it dies. Except, it seems, on a day like today, when the lightning was invited to strike elsewhere.”
“Is that Niko I hear?” Honored Moonstream opened her door and looked out. Her plum-dark lips smiled a welcome; her brown eyes sparkled. “Come in here—I need you.”
Tris turned back to the window.
A hand—warm, solid, almost comforting—rested on her shoulder. Before she could shrug off both it and the comfort, Niko said, “Mages have a very wise rule: before all else, do no harm.”