The Bronze Key (Magisterium #3)(44)
Call and Tamara nodded. As plans went, it wasn’t the greatest, but with Tamara worried about her sister and the whole room whispering about how chaos mages were bad news, it was the best they were likely to come up with. Call couldn’t help remembering what he’d realized after the Collegium ceremony: that there was a problem with the Enemy of Death being considered officially dead and the war over — in this new world, where Makars weren’t desperately needed, they made everyone afraid.
Call wondered how class would go that morning with Master Rufus when all three of them were in such a somber mood, but to his surprise, a special guest lecturer had been scheduled for their group.
To his even more extreme surprise, it was someone he knew: Alma from the Order of Disorder. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been trying to kidnap Havoc so she could add him to her massive stable of Chaos-ridden animals in the middle of the forest.
She still didn’t look like a dognapper. She looked like a kindergarten teacher. Her white hair was braided into a coil against her dark skin. She wore a gray shirt over a dark green skirt. Several long strands of jade beads hung around her neck. When she saw the three of them, her gaze went immediately to Aaron. She smiled, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, which remained deep and watchful.
“This is my old friend Alma Amdurer,” Master Rufus said. “She taught at the Magisterium when I was an apprentice and knew my Master, Marcus.”
Call wondered if Alma knew what had become of Marcus. Her expression didn’t change at the mention of him.
“She knows a great deal about chaos magic. Far more, I am sorry to say, than I do. Call and Aaron, you are going to spend the morning working with Alma while I teach Tamara alone. I have been thinking a great deal about what Assemblywoman Tarquin said at the meeting of the mages and I’ve decided that, as much as I don’t like to admit it, she was correct. You need to know things, and I don’t believe I am the right person to teach them. Alma agreed to come here on very short notice, so I want you to be polite and listen very attentively.”
The whole speech made Call more than a little nervous. Alma had been thrilled when Aaron had turned up at the Order of Disorder. She’d been dying to get her hands on a Makar. He recalled her trying to talk Aaron into returning to the Order of Disorder so she could experiment on him. Now, Master Rufus was practically handing him over.
“Okay,” Aaron said slowly, not sounding entirely enthusiastic.
“We’re going to stay here and work, though, right?” Tamara sounded as if she shared Call’s concerns and didn’t want to leave Aaron alone.
“We’ll be next door.” Master Rufus waved, and the stone wall parted, rock groaning and opening a crack, wider and wider, to clear a way for himself and Tamara. He turned back to Alma. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“We’ll be fine,” she said, with a glance at Call and Aaron.
Call watched Master Rufus and Tamara step into the next room. They looked distant and faraway through the hole Rufus had made. Tamara was trying to communicate something to Call with her face — her eyes wide and her hands making a gesture that looked like a dying bird — when the rock slammed back into place and they both were removed from view.
Without any choice, Call turned to Alma.
“You both look very skeptical,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t blame you. Can I tell you something that might surprise you? Master Rufus didn’t tell anyone else that he was inviting me to teach you. Not Master North. Not the Assembly. Not anyone. The Order of Disorder isn’t exactly respectable these days and neither am I.”
“You threatened my wolf,” Call said. “And my friend.”
Alma was still smiling. “I hope your friend here doesn’t take it personally that you mentioned the wolf first.”
“I don’t,” Aaron said. “Call knows I can take care of myself. But neither of us trusts you. I hope you don’t take that personally.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.” Alma backed up until she was leaning against Rufus’s stone desk. She crossed her arms. “Two Makars,” she said. “The last time there were two Makars alive at the same time, it was Constantine Madden and Verity Torres. They wound up in a battle to the death.”
“Well, that won’t happen to us,” said Call. Alma was starting to seriously get on his nerves.
“Two Makars in the same Magisterium, the same apprentice group — do you know how much trouble Rufus gets from the other Masters for that? They feel like he cheated them somehow at the Iron Trials.” She chortled. “Especially picking you, Call. Aaron was an obvious choice, but you’re something very different.”
“Are we going to learn anything here?” Aaron asked. “Besides teacher gossip, I mean.”
“You might just learn the most important lesson of your life, Makar,” said Alma sharply. “I’m going to teach you how to see souls.”
Aaron’s eyes widened.
“You are each other’s counterweights,” she went on. “And you are both chaos mages. Each of you can work the magic of the void, and that is why you bear black stones in your wristbands — it is what, I would guess, everyone has told you since the moment you were revealed as Makars. But there is another magic you can work as well. The magic of the soul. The human soul is the opposite of chaos, of nothingness. The soul is everything.”