༄༄༄

My mentor is acting strange tonight, I think, making my way to the fountain. Or am I paranoid? I've been quiet and docile these last two weeks, sure, but previously, Loretto has never let me chase my ideas and risk getting into trouble. Maybe now fae believes I can act sensibly? Because I can.

And why is Loretto suddenly interested in the rumors about the First Blood? Is she really in town? Is fae afraid of her then or seeking her audience? But if she taught both Maricela and Loretto, who's she gonna help now?

Lost in worries, I realize I've reachedthe fountain in the dark only when it's literally a step away from my very nose. I didn't know there was a fourth aura fountain in Tik'al, but I guess it's because this one is old, small, and broken. Just one split stone arch, like a door, with aura, blacker than the night, coiling around it like inky ribbons.

I look over the square overgrown with grass, surrounded by windowless walls, but there's nobody. I listen.

No one.

"Faris?" I ask quietly, my hands balling into fists. Not a trap, I remind myself. Not a trap. Loretto would never--

"You're alone?" Faris's voice replies from the dark, and before I can say yes, he steps from behind the inky arch. His shoulders are stiff, the corners of his lips downcast, and everything in his posture screams of his nervousness. With Ariane, as I always saw him, he is relaxed and smiling, and now he looks like a little hawk that just dodged a hunter's bullet.

My eyes prowl over Faris again, trying to comprehend this new side of his character and figure what scared him so much, I notice his right hand surreptitiously reaching for the fountain's arch. Aura billows around his fingers, and--his skin doesn't look burned. My jaw drops open. "You're a shaman."

"You're a shaman."

I blink, conflicted, as our voices merge into one. No, I'm-- I'm about to mechanically deny it, but then I realize I'm standing just as close to the fountain. I can feel aura's minty touch on the fingers of my left hand. I gave it away. Loretto was wrong, I'm still a troublemaker. But it doesn't matter if-- "You're a shaman?" I repeat, vexed puzzlement dozing off all my previous thoughts. "But you're dating my sister!"

No, that's impossible. This suddenly seems too complicated. New thoughts begin to spin in my head. Ariane hates shamans, they killed her father; she won't date one. Or...she will? From the year her father died, she's been crazy about learning about magic as much as possible.

At first, everyone believed she, just like Cale and Kofi, wanted revenge and researched her enemy, but when she announced she applied to Tik'al to study alchemy yet refused to help me and my brothers with thealchemical formula of the potion depriving shamans of their power, it became obvious--she had no enemies here. Kofi then called her cuckoo, Cale just stopped talking to her at all for a year, and I...I don't know. I felt betrayed for a while, then kinda accepted. I told myself her hatred simply couldn't stop her curious mind.

Perhaps I got it all wrong, perhaps not every plainblood is as blind as I was, not every plainblood hates every shaman? Even in my family.

Ariane is the only one who I've actually never heard saying that every problem in our family's life is because of shamans. What if she's been suspecting everything Loretto told me about shaman power being no inborn talent all along?

"I thought my shaman nature was obvious to you," Faris says, frowning. "Since you're here. Of course Ariane knows. We don't lie to each other." He pauses. "But what about you? She said you were faking it."

"Yeah, so I thought." She told him, she really trusts a shaman. Cursing under my breath, I step away from the fountain so that aura won't stick to my hand and I won't accidentally get someone electrocuted again. "Faris, are you really eighteen? Or like Loretto..."

"Loretto's an exception, I'm eighteen, Elisey. Relax."

"But if you don't lie to my sister, does she know you're spying on me?"

Faris freezes midbreath, and the wind ruffling his short dark hair is the only thing moving about him for a beat. His eyes dart past my shoulder, as though expecting someone to follow me and attack him, then, finding none, back to me. "I wasn't spying on you, I was trying to talk to you. But you're constantly among people or--with your mentor."

He's afraid of Loretto, I realize. And that's why we're by the fountain. Shamans can channel aura, but it requires concentration. Even if it's a split second, time matters in a fight. Loretto is more powerful than Faris, so for Faris, the only chance to win is to be prepared. An aura fountain is like a loaded gun. It's an alluringly dark kind of pleasure, though--to know that Loretto, my friend, can be fearsome. But not for me. Wow. It's like owning a pet panther.

But I don't trust Faris, even if Ariane does. "I saw you talking to a councilor at the library, Faris. How can I trust whatever you say is true?"

"And I saw you sweetly cooing multiple times to Loretto who takes orders straight from nobody but the empress herself, Elisey, so how can I trust you now? I thought you knew better!" Faris's voice rises dangerously, echoing within the walls around, and he flinches. Taking a breath, he begins passing before me, irregularly, restlessly.

I wonder if that's how I look when I feel anxious, too? Then it's...irritating.

Faris's tone is once again composed as he continues, "And what I could possibly tell the council? They know everything about you. They know that you've been stealing aura to forge a weapon against shaman magic for years, that your family has been planning a revolution with your older brother as a leader, and that your mentor, who was supposed to kill you or get punished and excluded from the upcoming trials for failing at making you a magician, succeeded!"

"The council can't know all this about my family. They would've stopped us."

Faris laughs, a sour sound. "Stop you? By murdering half of the city of Cale's followers? Why are they gonna rule over, then? Or just murder Cale, and then trouble themselves with searching the new leader? Because there will be a new one. The best way to stop the opposition is to control it. Watch you, infiltrate your circles, and manipulate you into thwarting your own game. Make your politics more flawed than the empress's is. Give you as much freedom as they wanted you to have." Faris stops, halting in front of me, blinking quickly with nervousness. "You thought you were Cale's secret agent since you got here? Well, congats, now you're a shaman, therefore the empress's secret agent. You're the part that is supposed to thwart your own game."

I roll my shoulders, dismayed. The best way to stop the opposition is to control it. Is this what's been happening all the years of Maricela's rule? I know that the very first uprising against her, led by my great-grandfather failed because his brother went mad, and spread fear of magic and chaos with new force among people for years. Now, when we finally made a plan and found a way to use magic against shamans, everyone began to refuse to steal aura as several thieves never came back. Disappeared. That was why Kofi and I had to do it ourselves. Maricela could make us disappear, too, but she knew it wouldn't stop the people.

But if you catch a Montejo and make him a shaman ... Turn the enemy into one of yours...

"And how do you know all that, Faris?" I ask.

Faris hesitates. "The council you saw me talking to at the library is Azmat, my father's colleague at the alchemy labs. They drink beer together sometimes. If Amzat has too much to drink, his tongue loosens up. He says nonsense mostly, bragging about his nonexistent feats, women, men, and his allegedly irreplaceable place by the empress, but...he also likes criticizing the empress when he's drunk. And last time, he admitted he was ready to push her off her throne, as he said, and that he even made a deal with some naughty plainbloods."

I shake my head. "Cale would never strike a deal with a shaman." His principle number one--no shamans. He follows it without exceptions for his entire life.

"Not Cale. Cale's friend...Pavlo...Pablo? The black humor lover, as Ariane called him. Apparently, Azmat guaranteed him Cale's place as the plainbloods' leader and his help with the recipe of your grandfather's essence, whilePablo in exchange has to make sure that this essence will only kill the empressand leave her throne to Azmat."

The essence depriving shamans of their power. It still doesn't work properly, no matter how much we try and how much stolen aura spend on trying, otherwise Cale would've made a move years ago. It makes sense a shaman can help, but what a shaman expects in return? To be saved from being deprived of power like all others? Doubt it. It's either another Maricela's plan to lead us astray, or Azmat indeed hopes to outwit the empress and then sit on the throne himself. But once with the crown, does he need to keep his end of the deal? No. Then my whole family and Cale and Pablo and Loretto--all end up imprisoned. Or hanged.

"I myself was talking to Azmat at the library," Faris adds, "simply because I was at the library where he found me to ask whether or not I'd heard him bragging to my dad about all this a day prior. I said no. But then I talked to Ariane."

"That simple? You said no and he believed you? And you and Ariane know much, huh? Azmat, Pavlo, the empress's web of agents infiltrating Cale's circles?" More than I learned since I've been here--and I've been trying to learn! Or more like trying to survive, really. "And you believe Azmat's drunken talks? Or maybe he wanted you to say no and talk to Ariane?"

Faris shrugs. "I don't believe anyone but my family and your sister, Elisey, but I think it doesn't hurt to know things and take them into account." Fixing his glasses, he says, "Anyway, Ariane can't send you a note with her aura ring herself, worrying it might be tracked, neither can she come to talk to you for it might be too obvious, so she asked me to ask you to talk to Cale about all this. He won't listen to her, but he must be convinced to postpone all his plans before he begins a real coup he has no chance of surviving."

If only it was that easy, I think, staring at my boots in the dark. Cale might've listened to me, but not if he learns I'm a shaman. Maybe this is why Maricela wants her eyes on me-not because I'm a shaman Montejo, but because I'm Cale's brother. She doesn't even need to severe my head now. Just tell everyone that the anti-shaman leader has a shaman brother and a sister who's been dating Faris--a hereditary shaman--and who'd follow this leader? Thwart your own game. How do I know that by talking to Cale now as Ariane wants I don't act on the empress's whim?

But if I don't talk to Cale and he acts out, he gets us all killed for sure. So I just have to do it carefully somehow. Cale has reasons to loathe shamans, so I need to give him reasons to like shamans--like Loretto gave reasons to me. Then it might work, it has! It's the only way. Yet I need to talk to Cale and Kofi in person then, a letter will only make me look brainwashed--but how can I leave to talk to them if I'm constantly watched now? Shit.

Perhaps this is the time to tell all this to Loretto, but am I not putting faer at more risk by revealing this information? Then Loretto will automatically be our accomplice. And I don't want to distract my mentor from the training for the trails.

Loretto.

"Do you or Ariane know the rumors about the goddess?" I ask, remembering.

Faris stares at me, perplexed. "What about them? Those rumors are...rumors. Even if the goddess exists, she's a few thousand years too old to be interested in trivial politics and help us if that's what you wonder, don't you think? I can get a century or two, like the empress and Loretto, my grandma is a hundred and twenty and quite active and cheerful, but thousands? Can you even wrap your mind around it? I think if I were that old and still hadn't lost taste for life, I'd do something greater than royal intrigues, like...research stars? Find a way to travel to the underworld? Politics is about survival and power, and for the First Blood, it's no trouble, obviously."

"Is she in town?"

Faris eyes me for a long moment. "That's a specific question."

"Loretto just--"

"I told you, don't trust Loretto!" Faris's expression suddenly gains a weird mixture of alarm and revolt. He walks around the square again, fuming. "Three months aren't enough to really get to know a person, Elisey. Fae might as well be on the empress's side, using you to control your feelings and feed you her ideas."

My pride prickles. It was my idea to come talk to Faris, not fed to me by someone! I've put so much effort into convincing Loretto to trust me and now Faris suggests that I don't deserve Loretto's trust only if it's a lie? And why do people keep questioning faer? They can't make conclusions about the person they don't know. And I do know Loretto. Like nobody else here. "Trust you, then, Faris?" I ask, crossing my arms. "I've seen you, like, five times in my life, it'll barely make for a day in total! Or should I trust your drunken Azmat? Or Ariane's judgment? Where is she, then? Or my brothers? Or my moms? They obviously decided it was safer to ditch me and leave to deal with all shit on my own than get me out! Loretto is the only person who's been here for me in these last three months! Risking faer life to keep mine safe. I feel like I don't know anyone except for Loretto anymore."

Faris stops and looks up at me, his features darkening. "Don't you think it's convenient, though? Easy to trust someone like Loretto? I mean, faer face is too cloying to my liking, but to yours? Loretto can be quite attractive to the eye regardless of whether you prefer boys or girls. Plus, a sharp mind, artful manners...You're eighteen, fae looks eighteen--a perfect match."

"Loretto can't help it. Magic makes faer look young."

"Magic?" Faris laughs, a scornful sound. "That's how you think it works? No, Elisey. Magic allows you to stay young, but it doesn't make you stop aging without your consent. Otherwise some shamans wouldn't die even when they got tired of living. You won't grow back younger, sure, but magic materializes your intentions. Wish to stay imposing and forty for years? Or look wise and wrinkled and eighty? Magic will help you stop aging when you want to--just be powerful enough."

"No, this can't be like that." There's something in Faris's confident tone or his logical words that makes too much sense, though. My stomach churns. But the logical way doesn't mean the only possible way, right? And Faris has no idea how much Loretto has done for me so far. We're a team. And maybe Faris himself is now acting on Maricela's whim, leading me astray from the right path? Or he's jealous of Loretto's powers. Where is Faris himself in the shaman rating, huh? The third from the end?

I can see Faris's urge to argue, but in the end, he only sighs. "I hope you're right, then. Because Ariane believes in you. And I hope you don't find an eighteen-year-old looking shaman like Loretto charming and innocent and trustworthy to the blind devotion of the hormones of yours."

༄༄༄