Chapter 68: The Pact of Enemies, Part Eleven: The Most Useless Creature in Mayorka

You see, there are two ways to have a secret discovered. One is that someone looks for it. The other, far worse, is that someone finds it in front of thirty-six people while trying to do you a favor.

Arrived at Botany and Creatures class that Thursday with a three-word plan written in the margin of a notebook: ask Fendrel without asking Fendrel.

Left with the answer, the entire classroom laughing at me, and the very clear sensation of having committed a mistake I wouldn't be able to come back from.

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Professor Fendrel receives each student with a small smile and a theatrical gesture of the hand, indicating where to sit, as if instead of a classroom he were handing out opera boxes. His hands have been stained with earth since before any of us were born, and he has a soft voice with a tremor underneath, and that voice is the only one in Mayorka that has never made me feel like I'm in the way.

In the pot at the back, the three-stemmed plant opened and closed its three barbed mouths in case something edible passed by.

"Today the creatures are distributed," Fendrel said. "You will care for them the entire semester. Feed them. Observe them. And if you're lucky, and only if you are, you will bond with them."

The nobles got excited like children at a fair.

Caspian Vereth got a potted treant that was, as far as I could tell, a stick with opinions. He loved it so much he named it before returning to his seat. Naral Docaror was given a reptar that changed its skin to brown the moment it smelled him, which seemed to me a rather accurate judgment. Alexia Vane, a silver-winged harpy hatchling that bit her fan, and she laughed for the first time all day.

"Elcronne," Fendrel said, looking at his list. "You are not assigned one."

Thirty-five heads turned. Here they always all turn.

"You already have one," the old man continued, calm. "And if I'm not mistaken, you've brought it."

Took Garchi out of the satchel. He protested on principle, which is his way of greeting the world.

"A cat," someone from the third row said, with that tone.

"A cat," Fendrel confirmed. "Bring him here, young man."

Set him on the desk, between the pots, and he sat with all four paws together and the intact dignity of someone who doesn't understand anything that's happening.

"Every bonded creature must be registered," Fendrel said, pulling from a cabinet a pot I already knew. "And to register it, first it is measured."

The Cherub's Tongue. White, transparent leaves, almost like crystal. Changes color according to the type of Empero that touches it and retains it for hours. Blue if physical, red if elemental, violet if conceptual.

I had touched it on the first day. It turned violet in front of the entire class, Fendrel said the rarest, and Layda wrote something in her notebook that I still don't know what it was.

"Bring him closer."

Ran my hand along his back and brought Garchi to the leaves. He put his nose on them, sniffed, and gave them a lick, because he's a cat and couldn't care less.

The plant stayed white.

Fendrel tilted his head.

"Again, please."

Again. The whole paw on the leaves, five full seconds.

White.

That murmur that rises started in the classroom.

"Professor," Layda said from the front row, in her little voice, "does that mean it's very weak?"

"It means there's nothing, Miss Alaranne."

A strange silence fell.

"Every creature in Earolden has something. A lesser dragon dyes this plant red from a meter away. A reptar turns it pale blue. A field mouse turns it a blue so faint you have to look at it against the light. But it turns."

He looked at the cat. The cat returned his gaze with those green eyes that harbor a single worry.

"This animal has no Empero. Not a little. None."

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It was then that Anaïs spoke from the back, and I don't think she realized she was saying it out loud.

"That's why I can't feel him."

Fendrel turned toward her.

"Explain yourself, miss."

"In Rahlarka they teach us to sense animals before seeing them." Anaïs had red ears, but continued. "I've crossed paths with that cat in the hallways once or twice and always thought I was distracted. It's not that he's silent. It's that where he should be, there's nothing. Like a hole."

"Like a hole," Fendrel repeated, very slowly.

That phrase reached the back of my neck before it reached my head. I'd been sleeping with that animal on my chest for almost a week and it never occurred to me that what I took for calm could be, for someone who knows how to listen, a place where nobody is.

And then Fendrel did something I'd never seen him do: he sat down.

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"Give me a minute, young Elcronne."

He rummaged in his desk drawer and took out a small plate with a pebble inside. Gray, round, the size of a thumbnail. He pushed it toward me.

"Touch it."

Touched it. It was warm.

"It's a stone from the rainbow beach, where Mayorka's river meets the sea. I've had it for forty-one years and it hasn't cooled a single night. It's good for nothing, except to explain to a student what a property is." He pushed the plate a finger further. "Now let the cat have it."

Placed Garchi in front of the plate.

He lowered his head. Sniffed the pebble.

Bumped it with his nose. Once.

And then he bumped it again.

Touched the stone with my fingertip, because I already knew what was going to happen and needed to confirm it myself.

It was cold.

Put my hand on Garchi's back and he was burning. Burning like a brick fresh from the oven, like a cup served a minute ago, like a stone that hasn't cooled in forty-one years.

Someone let out a laugh at the back of the classroom, because they hadn't understood anything. The rest laughed behind, to keep company.

"Silence," Fendrel said.

And for the first time in the course he hadn't said it softly.

"What you have there is called, in the old books, a blank canvas," he continued. "I've read about them. Never seen one."

"And what does it do, Professor?"

"Nothing. That's exactly the point." He passed his hand over his face and left a streak of dirt on his cheek. "It has no Empero of its own. No ability of its own. Nothing of its own, and that's why it can borrow the property of any magical object that touches it twice and carry it for a while or indefinitely as long as it has the object."

"How long a while?"

"Depends on the object."

He looked at Garchi. Garchi was licking his hot paw with all the attention in the world.

"That's why he's so white, young Elcronne. There's nothing written underneath."

And there, exactly there, the classroom decided what it had heard.

They heard no Empero. They heard no ability. They heard nothing of its own. And they started laughing with an eagerness they hadn't allowed themselves all week, because they'd been looking since Monday for something to feel better about.

"The Dog at Her Heels got the most useless creature in Mayorka!"

"A cat that can't do anything! Just like his owner!"

"Excuse me, Professor, can I trade it for a snail? A snail at least leaves a trail."

Fendrel struck the desk with an empty pot and they fell half-silent.

I said nothing.

You see, there was a part of me, the stupid part, that wanted to stand up and slowly explain to them what they had just heard without listening.

And there was another part, newer and a considerably worse person, that was realizing something much better.

I was in a classroom with thirty-six nobles who had just decided, all at once and out loud, that my cat is a joke. That he's good for nothing. That he's not even worth looking at twice.

Never in my life had anyone gifted me something like that.

They were underestimating Garchi, and that was an advantage.

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At the end of class, while I was putting Garchi back in the satchel, Fendrel approached and put a dirt-stained hand on my shoulder.

"Young Elcronne."

"Yes, Professor?"

"The old books say something else about blank canvases, and I haven't said it in front of them." He lowered his voice to that tremor of his. "They say that what a canvas can hold depends entirely on who paints it. And that almost none of them break on their own."

He squeezed my shoulder once and went off to water the three-mouthed plant.

Out into the hallway with the satchel on my shoulder and a warm cat inside, thinking about a ring, about a promise I'd made to that animal out loud seven days ago, and about how quickly my flexibility was developing.

And that's why I didn't see the other thing coming.

Because at eleven that night, in the east wing, someone screamed.