me on her good side, will ya?” and he had winked and smiled a silver-toothed smile.
Like hell was I giving these pies to Mother Morevna, I thought. I wrapped them in a handkerchief and headed down into the west side, toward a row of clapboard houses where speckled chickens pecked at the grit. I was looking for one person in particular, who would hopefully be excused from school for lunch like the rest of the seniors. And sure enough, she was sitting on her front porch. Both her dress and the artfully tied kerchief she wore were the yellow of newly ripened corn. She was seemingly finished with lunch and just taking time for herself.
“Surprise,” I said, handing one of the pies to her. “To make up for not being able to bring you water anymore.”
“Thanks!” she said. “And don’t worry about it. Normal water works fine anyway. What kind is this, cherry?”
“Apple,” I said.
“Perfect.” I expected her to just take the pie and send me on my way, but to my surprise, she scooted over and patted the porch beside her. We ate in silence for a few moments; then, after about half of her pie, Lucy wrapped it back in the napkin. “I’m gonna save the rest of it to give to Aunt Lucretia when she gets back from the ration office. She loves apple pie even more than I do.”
“I think you told me her name once,” I said. “Lucretia?”
“Yep. I’m named for her. She’s strong as an ox. She’s gonna live to be three hundred at the rate she’s going.” Lucy laughed. “If we make it through the rest of this year, of course.”
A silence fell, like it always did when anyone mentioned the coming end of the Game.
Then she turned to me and said, “So how’s it going, being the Successor and all?”
I shrugged and took another bite of pie.
“That bad, huh?”
“I thought it would be okay at first,” I said, surprised at myself for being so forthcoming. “I mean, she allowed me to decide about letting in Asa Skander. But she doesn’t want me there. She doesn’t even want a Successor, I don’t think.”
“Well, to your credit, he’s a good magician,” Lucy said. “All the kids love him.”
I thought of him, Asa Skander, how strange he felt, how something about him made my hair stand on end. Of the smoke I’d seen billow from his mouth. Then I thought of the quarter in my pocket. An anomaly.
“Maybe Mother Morevna can’t let you help her with whatever she’s doing because it would take too long to teach you at the moment,” Lucy said.
“I’m pretty much teaching myself right now,” I said, thinking of the penny glowing in my pocket. I told Lucy about how in only a matter of days, I had learned several basic, typeless spells—though I left out the part where I ransacked my room doing so.
I told her about the spell I learned that sent a knee-high whirlwind careening around my room (scattering my Futhark pages and spell ingredients to high heaven). I told her about how I learned to create fire—just enough to light a candle for now—with a pinch of pepper and a motion like blowing a kiss, and burned the corner of my blanket black. And, the most useful one so far, I told her how I’d learned to cast a spell on my shoes that made them quiet, even on the hardwood floors of the church.
“Sounds pretty impressive to me,” said Lucy. “I can’t do any of that.”
“Yeah, but I feel like such a fraud,” I said. “I mean, there are only three months left until the Dust Soldiers come, and here I am, making tiny whirlwinds and quiet shoes. I wish I could do something to help catch those thieves, you know? Since they were only able to steal from us because I was seeing the rain again.”
“Maybe that’s what you should do,” said Lucy. “Catch the thieves. Prove that you’re worthwhile even if she doesn’t think so right now. I mean, you were chosen. Surely there’s some kind of spell you can learn that’ll help you.”
I thought about this. There were all kinds of spells in the Booke: spells for blocking light, spells for making the wind blow, spells for making fire in your hand, and spells for looking into mirrors and seeing other places like you were looking through a window. Maybe I couldn’t catch the thieves with one of these spells. But surely I