for two weeks. Parts of the ocean boiled all the sea life alive—that was quite unpleasant to clean up after, though I’m told we discovered some interesting delicacies in that time too. And then there was the plague that killed one-eighth of the world’s population.”
The Camel was across the street, and from this angle, she could see the inner building, with its Hall of Summons, poking out where the outer walls dipped low enough to reveal it. There was nothing cohesive in the design of it; it looked like dozens of ideas had been thrown in a blender and poured out while they were still chunky.
“Kyros,” Sloane said, “has anyone ever commented on the way you talk about catastrophe?”
“No. Why?”
“No reason.”
Cyrielle was standing right in the middle of the lobby. Today she wore only blue: blue lipstick, a blue feather stuck in her hair, tight blue trousers, and a billowing blue blouse with a high neck. She wore a hand siphon made of delicate gold chains that crisscrossed over her knuckles and wrapped in a dense cuff around her wrist. She didn’t look pleased. “We’ve been looking for you,” she said tersely.
“I went for a walk,” Sloane replied. “Kyros was kind enough to join me.”
“Nevertheless, you should clear it with someone before you—”
“I wasn’t aware I needed permission to leave this building.”
“The issue is not permission,” Cyrielle said. “If you don’t care about my reaction or Nero’s and Aelia’s, then you might spare a thought for your friends, who had no idea what happened to you.”
Sloane couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
“You’re missing another training session,” Cyrielle said. “Come.”
Kyros nodded at Sloane, who reluctantly followed. Apparently she needed to learn a shield, at least.
“A very hearty what-the-fuck to you,” Esther said when Sloane walked into the room where they were training.
The Hall of Summons, Cyrielle had explained to Sloane as they walked, was closed for repairs after Sloane’s “stunt”—Cyrielle’s word for what had happened the day before. Instead, they were in a bare room on the fourth floor of the Camel that was typically used as a meeting space for students. There were no windows, and the furniture—a few beat-up couches—was pushed against the walls, leaving a clear stretch of beat-up wood floors for their practice.
Matt didn’t even look in her direction when she walked in, just continued to hum into his oscilloscope.
“Whatever,” Esther said, raising her siphon hand. “Just get to work.”
Sloane took the siphon Cyrielle offered her, determined to do something useful with this session. She pulled the cord tight with her teeth and flexed her fingers.
Unfortunately, determination and intent didn’t seem to be the same thing, because the only thing she accomplished in the next two hours was reliably humming at 170 MHz. Meanwhile, Esther had figured out how to modulate the strength of her magical breath, Matt had enough precision to fill a balloon with a succession of magical breaths, and Nero had cleared them both to move on to something else. Cyrielle, who had been working one on one with Sloane, seemed ready to hurl the siphon—or Sloane herself—at a wall by the time she called the session to a close.
After, Sloane went back to her room and flopped on her bed, her head throbbing. It was impossible to “stop thinking so much,” as Cyrielle had instructed her to do, when you were thinking about not ripping your friends to shreds with magic while simultaneously worrying that the Resurrectionist would suffocate you if you didn’t learn faster.
There was a knock on her door, and then Esther was leaning on the door frame, her arms crossed. She had adopted the thick eyeliner that people on Genetrix seemed to favor. Esther was nothing if not adaptable.
“All right, so,” Esther said. “You’re a selfish dick, and apparently you’ve killed people.”
Sloane stared. She wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“I just figured it would be better to get it all out in the open,” Esther went on. “While you were on your little stroll this morning and everyone else was fretting about where you were, I accepted your certain demise and went down to the library and looked up some names.”
“You accepted my demise pretty quickly.”
“I was pissed at you,” Esther said, picking at a cuticle. “Anyway, first I got the librarian to search for our names, just to make sure there weren’t parallel versions of us running around out there—thank God she didn’t find anything or I’d probably lose