Traitor Savant (Second Seal of the Duelists) by Jasmine Giacomo Read Free Book Online Page B

Temple’s center due to the high expectations that arrived with her, so from her cluster of small circular windows, which peppered her wall like windblown seeds, she could see the other five major towers, each named for one of the musical scales used in songwork. Within their circle lay the great Choral Hall, which occupied a cockle shell-like depression in the very center of the Temple floor. Beyond the farthest towers in the ring rose the Temple’s far wall, which formed a vertical barrier against the nearby mountain spires and swept all the way down to the Choral Hall. When she’d first arrived, the hemispherical cup of the Temple had seemed an otherworldly creation, as if Bhattara had dropped his stew bowl from the sky into the rocky towers of the Spineforest. Now, the mysterious, reclusive campus felt like a jujufish’s prison, a bowl over whose edge she could never hope to escape.
    The sun was nearing the bowl-wall’s western escarpment. Despite the Temple’s lofty location, it had been created in a secluded valley for the safety of its singers, who, unlike the duelists, did not possess magical defense arts. The sun rose late and set early all year round. However, that didn’t mean that the singers had to live in the dark.
    Tala turned from her tiny window and faced her room. Her eyes took in her bed, with its homemade quilt, lovingly stitched by her late mother, and the wardrobe containing her uniforms and formal robes. Against the other wall rested her writing desk with paper and ink. Radiant light bathed her belongings as Tala opened her mouth and summoned brightness to the air with a quick trill. She sat on the bed, running her hands across the palm-leaf and sea wave patterns, feeling the familiar heat of tears in her eyes. Her mother had died knowing Tala had been accepted to the Temple, but sickness took her before she could see her daughter begin her training. The quilt had been her last gift to Tala: a memory of home.
    Hand clutching the quilt, Tala s ang again. A rising series of slow notes in the major Tuathi scale brought nearly unbearable heat to the room; reversing the note pattern in the minor scale sucked away the heat, leaving her shivering. Tala sang the moisture out of the chill air, leaving the surfaces of the room dripping with condensation, then wicked it away again. More major scale, more minor scale: the window holes vanished, then reappeared. Tala’s voice grew resonant, powerful, echoing through the empty tower’s air channels. Bringing her voice to its most powerful, highest notes, Tala sang salt into the air, holding the last note as long as she could. The briny tang smothered her in memories, which melded with the tears on her cheeks.
    Home , by the warm waters of the Teresseren Sea, was so far away.
    Her last note faded, and a knob of sorrow twisted hard inside her chest. If only she could sing well enough to pass her Solo exam and earn a crystal, then its resonant matrix could sustain the spell for her. But no. She was cursed with hiccups of fright every time someone so much as looked at her. She crashed to her knees on the velvety green sung rug that covered her stone floor, its perfect nap thick and soft. Dragging her mother’s last gift around her shoulders, she squeezed her eyes shut and wished herself home, in the bright seaside city of Nambulay, where the Teresseren Sea lapped the white sand with gentle kisses, and the golden bricks of the city’s buildings made her feel warm even on the coolest dry season evenings.
    “Bhattara,” she wept, “I am so alone. So alone.”

A Bitter Potion
     
    The chaos in the six-sided room nearly overwhelmed Kipri as he entered and stood at the front. Thirty-six teenagers, only a few years younger than he was, were laughing, pushing, running and throwing things. After shoving down an uncomfortable flashback to the detention center at the eunuch training Academy, Kipri let out a bracing breath and called for quiet. His high voice caught