A Student's Dream (Twisted Cogs Book 1) (23 page)

“
Drop the weapon or I’ll break them all!” she said, holding the bundle of arrows over her head as if she would snap them over her knee.

“
Jesu mi salvi
!” the archer clutched at her chest with one hand, the sudden startled fear on her face giving way to a chuckle. “
Matrem omnium sanctorum
you scared me half to death. I almost fell off this roof.”

“
I keep telling you to be more aware of your surroundings,” Bello had turned as well, his large arms folded across his chest.

“
Oh shut up, Bello, they managed to sneak up on you too,” the archer had lowered her crossbow and was wearing a grin as she looked Elena up and down. Out of the corner of her eye Elena could see Ele shifting uncomfortably, and she was just as nervous. The pair did not seem like two people at their mercy, they seemed like two people at ease, confident, and amused.

“
No tricks,” Elena warned, “I mean it, I’ll snap these arrows in two.”

“
Not to be pedantic, but they’re bolts, not arrows,” the archer pointed out, “they’re for a crossbow. Also, please don’t, you have no idea how much those cost to make. They’re works of art really.” Elena glanced at the bolts in her hands. There was no question that these were the bolts that had hit her. Just as she and Ele had guessed, the heads were not only flat, but bulged slightly to prevent them from puncturing flesh. A tiny pin like the fang of a snake stuck out from the flat ends, all of which were made of some sort of glass. Thin liquids of different colors sloshed around in each.

“
How does the glass not break when it hits someone?” Elena wondered aloud, curiosity overcoming her sense of danger.

“
That’s part of what makes them so expensive!” the archer said excitedly, “see it’s not glass, it’s much stronger. It absorbs the shock of impact, and then tiny little barbs hold the bolt in place-”

“
While the force of the impact injects the liquid through these little fangs in the front,” Elena guessed, “but why the not-glass at all? Why not just have a hollow compartment in the wood?”

“
Um...Elena...” Ele muttered, “there’s a time and a place-”

“
Aha, that’s exactly what I asked! It turns out that the liquids would seep into the wood itself if they come into contact with it, so something different was needed. Plus, they thought I’d want to look at the color to determine what kind of bolt I was firing. Can you imagine, sorting through a handful of bolts to select the one I want while in the middle of shooting?” the archer chortled.

“
So how do you tell which kind of bolt...oh, I see, the different colors have different feathers on the ends. You can feel the difference in feathers when you’re reaching back to grab one.”

“
That’s exactly right! Only the feathers are called ‘fletching’...you’re a strange one, knowing how my bolts work but not knowing the difference between arrows and bolts, or what fletching is. What are you?”

The question suddenly reminded Elena that the friendly and outgoing woman in front of her was actually an enemy, one who had been talking casually about shooting her friends full of some unknown poison.

“
That’s not important,” she answered, “drop the crossbow.”

“
Hmm? Oh!” The archer carefully set her crossbow down on the roof. “Sorry, this is just my first year!” She reached into her pocket and dug out a silver coin, flipping it toward Elena. “Here you go!”

Elena caught it instinctively, only realizing after she caught it that it might be a trap to lure her attention away. The archer hadn’t moved, one thumb hooked into her pocket, the other resting on her hip. Elena risked a glance down at the coin in her hand.

It was large and silver, and the working across both faces was more intricate than she’d expect of a coin. An image of a cross was worked into the silver, and around the edge among a pattern of vines were the words “Cross, Year One, Studio Gritti”.

“
Cross?” Elena asked.

“
Yeah, I know it’s kinda obvious, ‘Cross carries a crossbow’,” Cross gave an embarrassed shrug, “but I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it, you know?”

Elena didn’t know. None of it made sense, and she felt more and more as if she was walking into a trap. Didn’t the girl care that these custom-made bolts, almost definitely the work of a Machinator, were in danger of being broken? Didn’t she care that she was at Elena’s mercy? Was it that obvious that Elena wasn’t planning on kicking her over the edge of the roof?

Elena shivered at the thought.

“
Alright, you’ve successfully startled us, gained the upper hand,” Cross’ Echo broke the silence, “congratulations, you are surely the most skilled garzona ever. Just be careful with the bolts when you give them back.”

“
What?” Elena felt as if she had missed something. Cross was still smiling, holding out her hand for the bolts. “N..no, no I’m not giving these back. I have to decide what I’m going to do with you two first.” The words were confident, but Elena felt more like she was asking permission than making demands.

“
What you’re going to do with us?” Cross exchanged a look with Bello, the smiles gone. “What do you mean ‘what you’re going to do with us’? You’re going to give us the bolts back.”

Elena glanced behind her, wondering if someone had snuck up behind her and was holding her at arrowpoint. The rooftop was clear, but Cross was moving for her, holding out her hand exasperatedly.

“
I’ll snap them in half!” Elena threatened.

“
Look you’re a cool girl, I’m glad I met you, but this isn’t funny,” Cross didn’t even slow down, reaching out as if to snatch the bolts from Elena’s hands. Elena backed up and tripped, sprawling on the rooftop and then tried to scramble to her feet.

She doesn’t think I’ll do it...she’s calling my bluff...
Panic began to set in, Cross was almost on top of her, and without letting herself hesitate Elena grabbed half of the bolts in one hand and dashed them on the rooftop, the silence of the night broken as the bolts splintered and shattered on the tiles.

“
Oh my god,” Cross whispered, the color draining from her face, staring in horror at the pool of mixing liquids and the splinters in them. “Oh my god what have you done?”

“
I told you I’d do it!” Elena protested defensively, feeling ridiculous for justifying herself to the girl. “I’ll smash the rest if you don’t back up!”

“
But...but I don’t understand...?” There were tears in Cross’s eyes, and the girl had the most hurt and betrayed look on her face that Elena had ever seen. “Why? What did I ever do to you?”

“
You shot me with an arrow!” Elena yelled. The rooftop suddenly lurched, though her stomach disconcertingly stayed in one place.

“
Deus
, the fumes! Hold your breath, don’t breath in the fumes!” Cross warned, but Elena wasn’t entirely sure how to do that when it felt like she wasn’t getting enough oxygen in the first place. The sky spun one way and the horizon spun the other, and Elena tilted her head to keep her balance and slumped to one side.

“
Elena!” Ele shrieked, but she could only see his panicked face for a few moments before she slipped over the edge of the rooftop.

She fell and fell and fell and fell, but the ground below never seemed to come any closer, although her stomach dropped at the sight of the unforgiving hard tiles beneath her. The rest of the crossbow bolts that had been clutched in her hand hit the tiles and shattered with small splintery cracks, and just above her Elena heard a moan. With difficulty she looked up to find Cross just above her, holding her fast by the back of her shirt.

“
Deos atque terrore vindictae
,” the blonde girl whimpered, staring past Elena and to the ground where the remains of the bolts lay, “Master Gritti is going to flay me alive. And if she doesn’t, Slug will do something worse. I
told
you to hold your breath!”

“
You saved me,” Elena managed to say around a tongue that was too thick. Cross dragged her back onto the roof with a series of grunts, then held onto the back of her shirt as she led Elena across the rooftop to the ladder.

“
Of course I saved you, what was I supposed to do, let you fall to your death?” Cross snapped. “Maybe I should’ve, considering how bad I’m going to be punished for this.” Elena clung fast to the ladder. “Echo, can you get her back to the studio?”

“
I can,” Ele responded shortly, as Elena slowly descended, clinging to the ladder with every rung, “but I have questions, I want to know what’s going on-”

“
You have
no right
to question me right now, after what you two just did,” Cross said with venom, “just...just get out of here.”

Elena touched the ground and started to run, but quickly slowed as the ground rolled beneath her. With one hand on the wall to steady her, and Ele murmuring encouragement, she made her way out of Studio Gritti.

***

The dizziness and disorientation lasted almost the entire trip back to De Luca’s studio, and Elena would’ve gotten turned around several times if Ele hadn’t pointed her in the right direction. Her stomach roiled with nausea, the exhaustion she had felt all night pounded in her head, and she couldn’t even begin to process what she had learned. By the time she reached the door of the studio every part of her hurt.

It had been a bad idea from beginning to end. It certainly didn’t feel like a victory, even though she
had
managed to keep Cross from shooting her friends, and by all rights had scored a win against a studio that...that what? That De Luca was at war with? That had attacked them? Were they at war with DaRose’s studio as well? Why had Cross seemed so friendly with them when she was about to shoot other De Luca garzoni, and why had she acted like Elena had broken some kind of code by retaliating?

“
This was supposed to tell us everything, and I have more questions than I started with,” she bemoaned quietly as they walked through the outer halls that led to the courtyard.

“
I might have some idea...but it’s too much to think through, I need your help,” Ele said, “things will be clearer in the morning, it’s obvious you’re not in a good state to think about important things right now.”

“
I’m not in a good state to think about
anything
right now.” Elena opened the door to the courtyard, pausing for a moment to let another wave of nausea pass. “I’m just glad I don’t have anything that needs thinking about before the morning...”

Her words trailed off as she stepped into the courtyard. Directly in front of her in the middle of the courtyard stood Niccolo, Nicci, Vittoria, Vi, Frederica and Fred, clearly waiting for her to return. Waiting behind them, with arms crossed and a frown on his face, stood Master De Luca.

De Luca’s office seemed much more imposing lit by lantern in the middle of the night. The flickering of the dim light gave the large room an air of mystery, and the pale yellow tint made it seem somehow more scholarly, and all of the books and papers in their neat, orderly stacks seem more profound. It was hard to forget that she was speaking to one of the most influential Masters of Milia in that room.

“
How did you know?” Elena mumbled, “did you check my room?” She was so tired that her eyes stung, but even in her exhausted state she could feel the prickles of worry like ice in her stomach. For all she knew, following the garzoni to Gritti’s studio was enough to get her kicked out, or perhaps De Luca wouldn’t care. There was no way she could gauge the extent of her crime, and that alone was terrifying.

“
Elena, I
did
tell you that we would put measures into place to warn us if you were out of bed at late hours,” Bea said gently. “Vittoria has a gift when it comes to watching out for people, and she saw you leave Gritti’s studio. She would’ve seen you enter it as well, but she was a touch distracted.” The gentle tone worried Elena almost as much as the freely offered information. There was no need for gentleness if Elena wasn’t going to be punished, and they’d always guarded their secrets before.

“
Are you...are you going to kick me out of the studio?” she asked, unsure if she wanted to hear the answer.

“
That depends,” De Luca sat at his desk with his fingers steepled. The answer and the ease with which he said it made Elena feel as if the wind had been knocked out of her chest, and the adrenaline alone served to wake her up a little.

“
What does it depend on?” Ele asked for her as she reeled.

“
It depends entirely on how I can think of you from now on.”

“
You can trust me sir, I’ll-”

“
It has little to do with trust and more to do with...how to put it? I am a man who loves procedure. I enjoy processes and rules and very stark definitions. Breakfast time is like so, dinner is like so. Servants are treated in one way, students another way. Provisional garzoni are like this, full garzoni are like that. I’m sure there exist masters for which your indomitable curiosity would be a joy, Elena, but for me all it does is blur the lines and ruin the distinctions which I like to keep in place.”

Elena glanced from De Luca to Bea who stood by his side. She had been glad when he’d sent the other garzoni to their rooms, glad that they wouldn’t see her scolded like a child, but now she wished there was someone else to give her a facial reaction or a clue. The Master and his Echo were studying her so carefully, and yet in the flickering lantern-light she couldn’t seem to make heads or tails of what their expressions meant.

“
I...I’m sorry, Master De Luca,” she said finally, “I don’t understand.”

“
It’s simple, child. I’m not interested in fostering any hybrid-halfway-special-case nonsense. Right now you are one such case, and I don’t intend to see you leave this room until I’ve decided into which category you fall so that you may be treated accordingly. You are either a provisional garzona who knows far too much, or you are a full garzona who has been here for less time than she should.”

“
Wait...you’re promoting me to full garzona?” Elena felt almost as disoriented as when she fell from Master Gritti’s roof, although at least then the only danger had been falling off of the roof to her death. Being kicked out of the Studio would be far worse.

“
He’s saying we know too much about what’s going on for him to treat you like a provisional, but not enough for him to treat you like full a garzona,” Ele translated quietly.

“
You know, some scholars say that a Stormtouched and their Echo are always nearly identical in their level of intelligence?” De Luca said conversationally. “I’ve never found that to be the case.”

“
Then...if that’s the problem, you could tell us what’s going on between the studios, and make me a full garzona,” Elena ventured, but De Luca was shaking his head before she even finished the sentence.

“
That
would
be promoting you to full garzona, and would be unfair to Lorenzo, Leanarda, and Mella. Indeed, it would be unfair to all of the provisional garzoni over the years who have ever worked hard to become full garzoni at this studio. Now in your case,” De Luca stabbed a wrinkled finger in Elena’s direction, “you’ve worked hard too, but you’ve worked in a different, roundabout direction. I’m not sure yet how well that has paid off for you, but we’re about to find out. Tell me, Elena, what, in your words, ‘is going on’ between the studios?”

“
I..I don’t know,” Elena said. It was overwhelming, too much to handle, and she couldn’t think hard enough or fast enough to manage any of it. As soon as she had a thought it seemed to slip through her mind like sand through fingers, and it was all she could do to even follow what De Luca was telling her.

“
In that case, I have no choice-”

“
Have you wondered why I recommended you, Elena Lucciano?” Bea held out a hand in front of De Luca, as if she would rest it on his shoulder if she could, and De Luca paused. Her voice was severe, but there was something strange in her eyes, something that Elena couldn’t quite identify. “You’re the first Fabera we’ve let in this studio in more than a decade, why do you think that is?”

“
Because...” Elena strained to remember, “you said I impressed you on the tour of the studio?”

“
So why don’t you sit down, think carefully, and try to impress me now.”

“
But I can’t-”

“
Just try.”

Elena obediently sat in the seat in front of De Luca’s desk, her mind racing and sluggish at the same time. Bea continued speaking.

“
Were you using your Storm, Elena, when you spied on the garzoni?”

“
Using my Storm?” The idea of pausing to focus on building something in the middle of the rush of confusion in Gritti’s studio was ludicrous. Even if she had managed to build some sort of weapon, it wouldn’t have told her anything new about what was happening. Elena looked to Ele to explain, but he looked just as confused as she was. “No...I didn’t need to build anything, why would I use my Storm?”

“
You didn’t need to build anything when you were on the tour either,” Bea replied, “and yet you knew things about the Studio that I doubt the full garzoni realize. You realized something even Bernardo and I hadn’t noticed before, when you noticed the studio has an ice chest.”

“
We have an ice chest?” De Luca asked. “I assumed the cooks bought ice from the market every morning.”

“
I just figured that stuff out because I was thinking of what I would need to start my own studio,” Elena mumbled, “I thought I wasn’t going to be allowed in. I was thinking of what I’d do-”

“
You were building it, in your head. Well then. Your Master is asking your a question about the city, Elena. You had better build a city.”

“
Enough help,” De Luca leaned back in his chair, folding his arms and fixing Elena with a look that was neither hostile nor friendly, “either she figures it out on her own from here or she’s not the garzona you thought she could be. Elena, I’ll ask you again, and I warn you now that if the answer is ‘I don’t know’, you will be be finding another bed to sleep in tonight. What is ‘going on’? What do the full garzoni know that the provisionals do not?”

Elena turned helplessly to Ele, to find him deep in thought, brow furrowed.

“
What are you doing?” she asked.

“
Trying to build a city in my head,” he replied. “It’s hard, there’s way too much to even consider.”

The panic was threatening to well up in her head, but Elena pushed it back down. When she replied to Ele, her voice came out shakily.

“
What’s there to consider? There’s a city with eight studios on eight streets named after colors, dedicated to beauty and art, collecting the most talented artists in the world. Oh yes, and sometimes in the dead of night they go out and attack each other for no reason.”

“
Why do they have to be named after colors?” Ele asked, ignoring the sarcasm.

“
Because they’re named after colors! Yellow, green, red, blue, grey, white, purple, black, those are colors!” The frustration and anxiety of the night was beginning to bubble over, and although she couldn’t snap at Master De Luca, she could snap at Ele. “I shouldn’t have to tell you how Milia is laid out.”

“
We’re
building a city, and I don’t think they should be named after colors. Our city, our choice,” Ele pointed out, “can we please just try this, Elena? Unless you’ve been holding out on me and actually know exactly what’s happening. What have we got to lose?”

For a few moments Elena didn’t know whether to help Ele or clench her teeth and scream. His eyes were closed, his arms behind his head, and his head tilted back towards the ceiling. After a few deep breaths, Elena closed her eyes as well, and focused.

“
Fine, eight studios, not named after colors. They are supposed to be dedicated to art, but for some reason they’re not,” she said, her voice somewhat bitter.

“
They are,” Ele corrected, “this is our city, and we want them to be, so they are. Art and beauty to all of Italoza. The highest courts commission the studio Masters, and the most talented of Stormtouched and Mortalis flock to them for guidance.”

“
Beautiful. Perfect. End of story.”

“
Stop being petulant and
think
.”

Elena pouted, but let her mind run over the foggy city in her mind, indistinct except for the eight studios that shone like diamonds. She began filling in spaces of the city in general terms: places to live, to work, areas to support the city itself, shops and imports to support the studios. After a while the map became muddled in her head, and it was easy to see why.

“
As long as we’re making an imaginary city and we can do whatever we want with it, I probably wouldn’t have eight of them,” she noted. “Let’s say four studios.”

“
But each studio is run by one master,” Ele pointed out, “that means only four Master artisans in our city.”

“
Four studios with their own group of garzoni would produce plenty of art, and still keep healthy competition going amongst themselves. The culture of the city will grow without strangling it.”

“
But more competition means only the best will survive! If four studios produce art and beauty, eight will produce twice as much, won’t they?”

Closing her eyes wasn’t helping Elena’s fatigue. Her temples were buzzing uncomfortably, and she snapped at her Echo irritably. “It’s not feasible, Ele! A city can’t support eight studios, there wouldn’t be enough supplies to go around, there wouldn’t be enough market for their art, and it would be impossible for them
all
to remain in equilibrium for long anyway.”

“
But, Elena-”

Even though it was uncomfortable and distracting enough that she wasn’t quite sure what they were arguing about, the buzzing in her temples was at least keeping Elena awake and alert. “The best students would join the best studios, so eventually the rest would have nothing left. They would close, so why bother starting with eight when either way we’ll end up with less? No, it’s my city, I say we’ll start with four studios. Eight is unsustainable.”

“
Elena, Milia has eight studios. It’s had eight studios for decades.”

Elena opened her eyes and stared at Ele, off-balance for a moment. She had forgotten that they were talking about a real city.

“
Milia has eight studios,” she repeated dumbly. “How?”

“
It...it can’t,” Ele faltered. “Like you said, it’s unsustainable. There’s not enough resources to go around.”

“
It can’t, but it does, so how does it?” Elena tried to follow it through, even tried to force the Storm back through her temples again, but the buzzing had stopped no matter how much she strained.

“
If the city isn’t running naturally, then something is keeping it moving, some sort of system,” Ele was on his feet now, pacing back and forth across the office, “a system held in place by law, so that all of the studios follow it.” Elena glanced at Bea and De Luca, but neither of them seemed to mind Ele’s pacing, watching the interchange carefully.

“
What kind of system?”

“
I don’t know...” Ele trailed off, looking at her sharply. “Build one.”

“
How am I supposed to-”

“
Just try. Congratulations, you’re the new Princeps of Milia. Your city has eight studios in it, not enough resources to take care of them all, and half of them won’t have enough students to stay open next year. Build a system to fix that.”