it, and to add knowledge of their own?”
“Lord Candallar,” Killian said for a third time. “The keys you carry have no value now. Set them down and leave.”
Illanen and Baltrin—the latter silent—had already begun to fade. Candallar wheeled in Illanen’s direction, but the Arcanist’s head was bowed; his expression could no longer be seen.
“If you desire it now,” Killian said, “Karriamis will free you. He will free you without devouring you, without destroying you. He has long been the most intense, the most focused; it is difficult to command him, and difficult to ignore him. You have said—you have thought—Karriamis a cage.
“But Candallar, you have made of me a cage for others, and that cage, too, is open. Those who do not wish to remain are free now to enter the stream of the lives they once had. I do not understand what you desired of the Academia. Freedom? Power? These things might exist here. But your cage is of your making; Karriamis did not cage you.
“Go. The Arbiters are restless, and none of the three are inclined to accept my judgment in this regard. Should you choose to remain, I cannot guarantee that I can continue to protect you from the consequences of your actions in this space.”
Candallar faded. He did not, however, release the objects that in theory governed the Academia.
“That,” Starrante said, “was unwise in the extreme.”
“It was Karriamis’s only request of me.”
“Candallar is a small man; it is not in him to allow others to enjoy what he himself does not control or possess. If he cannot have you, Killianas, he desires that no one does. Can you not feel it? I could feel it from here.”
“He cannot harm me now.”
“It is not for you that we fear, you fool. Think: Candallar understood—in a rudimentary, solipsistic fashion—how he might set about waking you. He understood you required a student body to function; he did not understand what a student is. But in his slipshod way, he has provided you with one: one significant student. There might be others—but they are not his equal.
“That student is no longer in the library. And if the insignia of office, of control, is no longer absolute, it is not a mere trifle.”
Kaylin understood. She understood at least as well as Starrante, and she turned to the Arbiter. “Send me,” she said, voice low. “Send me to Robin.”
* * *
Starrante built a door; the entire process seemed agonizingly slow. Hope sat on her shoulder, silent, as that door solidified and emerged; Starrante opened it.
“I cannot leave the library,” he said, “and remain as I am now. You retrieved me the first time, Chosen.”
Killian vanished as the door opened, and Kaylin stepped—or jumped—into an empty hall. Severn was beside her; he cleared the door first, both of his feet hitting solid stone on the other side before hers did. He ran, and she followed.
Nightshade!
Here, he said.
Where is Robin? Is he with you?
He is. He has taken his seat.
She couldn’t risk running and looking through Nightshade’s eyes at the same time; she didn’t. She trusted Severn to know where he was going.
Nightshade said nothing more. But she heard the breaking—the shattering—of a door long before she could see that door. And she heard distant shouts and screams.
Candallar didn’t understand that Robin was the heart of this tiny student body. He understood that students were necessary—and he intended to kill them all before he retreated—if he retreated.
She hated Arcanists, the instinctive emotion fueled by years of experience with the Hawks—but she was grateful that Illanen had chosen to retreat. Candallar was on his own here.
...Candallar was enough. Robin was bright, yes—and better fed, in the end, than Kaylin had been at his age. But he was as much a match for Candallar as Kaylin had been for Nightshade at the same age. She didn’t assume that the older students were in any better situation—they were here, after all, and they hadn’t chosen to be here.
Severn rounded the last corner, and the hall in which the classroom was situated came into view. Kaylin could see Candallar. His hair and his cloak were a mass of swirling darkness, lifted by arcane winds that touched nothing else. No, not nothing. She could see the advance of mist, of fog, lit on all sides by sparkling, moving color. She’d seen this before.
Candallar’s hands were on fire, the fire white and purple; she couldn’t see his eyes in the shadow of his profile.
But she could hear a familiar voice