“Is Aaron back?” Call asked, carefully shutting the bedroom door behind him and leaning against it in what he hoped was a nonchalant pose.
Tamara swallowed a mouthful of toast and shook her head. “No. Celia came by before and said classes were canceled for today. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“I guess I’d better change,” Call said, reaching out to grab a sausage off the table.
Tamara stared at him. “Are you okay? You’re acting kind of strange.”
“I’m fine.” Call grabbed another sausage. “Back in a minute.”
He darted into his bedroom, where the wolf pup was lying on a pile of clothes, waving its paws in the air. It bounded to its feet as soon as it saw Call, and jogged over. Call held his breath as he offered it a sausage. The wolf inhaled the food, gulping it down in a single bite. He gave it the second sausage, watching with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as that disappeared just as fast. Licking its muzzle, the wolf waited expectantly.
“Uh,” said Call, “I don’t have any more. Just wait and I’ll get you something else.”
Throwing on a fresh uniform should have taken seconds, but not with the wolf bounding all over the room. Revitalized by sausages, it stole Call’s boot and dragged it under the bed by the laces, chewing on the leather. Then, once he’d gotten his boot back, it grabbed hold of the hem of his pants and played tug-of-war.
“Stop,” Call begged, pulling, but that only seemed to make the wolf more gleeful. He bounded in front of Call, eager to play.
“I’ll be right back,” Call promised. “Just be quiet. And then I’ll sneak you out for a walk.”
The wolf cocked its head and went back to rolling on its back. Call took that moment to leave the room, shutting the door quickly behind him.
“Ah, good,” Master Rufus said, turning away from his perusal of the far wall to face Call. “You’re ready. We have to go to a meeting.”
Call nearly jumped out of his skin at the sight of him. Tamara, brushing toast crumbs off her uniform, looked at Call oddly.
“But I didn’t get to eat breakfast,” Call protested, looking over at the remaining food. If he could just smuggle a few more fistfuls of sausage into his bedroom somehow, he could get enough to tide the wolf over until he got back from whatever this meeting was. At his other school, they were mostly hour-long lectures about how bad things could happen to you if you did bad stuff, or what was wrong about bullying, or, at least once, the horrors of bedbugs. He didn’t think this was going to be like that, but he hoped it would be over fast. He was pretty sure the wolf would need to go for a walk really, really soon. Otherwise — well, Call was better off not even contemplating that.
“You ate two sausages before,” Tamara said unhelpfully. “It’s not like you’re starving.”
“Did you indeed,” said Master Rufus drily. “In that case, come along, Callum. There will be some members of the Assembly of Mages in attendance. We don’t want to be late, since I am sure you can guess what it will be about.”
Call narrowed his eyes. “Where’s Aaron?” he asked, but Master Rufus didn’t answer, just led them out into the hallway where they joined the stream of people flooding through the caverns. Call didn’t think he’d ever seen so many people in the halls of the school. Master Rufus fell in behind a group of older kids and their Masters, who were heading in a southerly direction.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Call asked Tamara.
She shook her head. She looked more serious than she’d been in weeks. Call remembered her the night before, grabbing his arms and trying to drag him away from the Chaos-ridden wolf. She’d risked her life for his. He’d never had a friend like her before. Never had friends like her or Aaron. Now that he had them, he didn’t know quite what to do with them.
They found themselves in a circular auditorium with stone benches rising up on all sides from a round stage. Along the far back, Call saw a group of men and women in olive green uniforms and guessed they were the Assembly members Master Rufus had been talking about. Rufus led them to a place down in front and there, finally, they saw Aaron.
He was in the front row, sitting next to Master North, just far enough away so that Call couldn’t talk to him without shouting. He could really see only the back of Aaron’s head, his feathery blond hair sticking up. He looked like he always did.
One of the Makaris. A Makar. It seemed like such an ominous title. Call thought of the way shadows had seemed to wrap around the wolf pack the night before and how horrified Aaron had looked after it was all over.
Chaos wants to devour.
It didn’t seem like the kind of power someone like Aaron, whom everybody liked and who liked everybody, ought to have. It should belong to someone like Jasper, who would probably be super into bossing around the darkness and stuffing weird animals full of chaos magic.
Master Rufus got to his feet and ascended to the stage, moving to the center to stand at the podium. “Students of the Magisterium and members of the Assembly,” he said. His dark eyes swept the room. Call felt as if his gaze lingered on Call and Tamara for a moment before it moved on. “You all know our history. There have been Magisteriums since the time of our founder, Phillippus Paracelsus. They exist to teach young mages to control their powers and to foster a community of learning, magic, and peace, as well as creating a force with which to defend our world.
“You all know the story of the Enemy of Death. Many of you lost family members in the Great Battle or in the Cold Massacre. You all know of the Treaty as well — the agreement between the Assembly and Constantine Madden, which ensures that if we do not attack him or his forces, he will not attack us.
“Many of you,” Master Rufus added, his dark eyes sweeping the room, “also believe that the Treaty is wrong.”
Murmuring began in the audience. Tamara’s gaze snapped toward where the Assembly members sat, her expression anxious, and Call realized suddenly that two of the Assembly members were Tamara’s parents. He’d seen them before at the Iron Trial. Now they sat ramrod straight, their expressions stony as they regarded Rufus. Call could feel the disapproval rolling off them in waves.
“The Treaty means that we must trust the Enemy of Death — trust that he will not attack us, that he will not use this hiatus from battle to build up his forces. But the Enemy cannot be trusted.”
There was a hum of noise among the Assembly members. Tamara’s mother had her hand on her husband’s arm; he was trying to rise to his feet. Tamara looked frozen.
Master Rufus raised his voice. “We cannot trust the Enemy. I say this as one who knew Constantine Madden when he was a student at the Magisterium. We have turned a blind eye to the increase in attacks by elementals — one last night, barely a few feet from the Magisterium’s own doors — and to the attacks on our supply lines and safe houses. We have turned this blind eye not because we believe in Constantine Madden’s promises, but because the Enemy is a Makar — one of the few among our kind ever born to control the magic of the void. On the field of battle, his Chaos-ridden defeated the only other Makar of our time. We have always known that without a Makar, we are vulnerable to the Enemy, and since the death of Verity Torres, we have been waiting for another to be born.”