All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [173]
She looked up. Because they were both sitting, and because the angle was just right, for one brief moment in the candlelight Eliot saw behind her glasses. Unfiltered by the lenses, her eyes were not their usual brown. Instead, the irises were clear and brilliant like cut diamonds.
“And for you Mr. Post? What shall it be? Trivial social pursuits? Or would you like to learn something this semester beyond the bare minimum and keep pace with your sister?”
Eliot bristled at that.
He wasn’t going to take any class that got him bruised and battered any more than he was already getting in gym (and with Robert after school).
“No, ma’am,” he replied. “I mean, yes, I’ll be taking an elective class.” He nodded at the catalog. “Page twenty-three, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Miss Westin ran a finger along the edge of the catalog, flipped open to the precise page, and scanned the class descriptions.
“Extraordinarily dangerous,” she murmured, and tapped her lower lip thoughtfully. “Are you absolutely sure?”
“What is it?” Fiona leaned forward.
Miss Westin turned the catalog to face him. “This one, correct?” She pointed to
THE POWER OF MUSIC: Seminars discussing music as applied to theoretical magical structures. Practice for instruments and/or voice held twice a week with emphasis on emotive control. Periodic evaluation before live audiences. Prerequisites: Must pass an audition. Signed waiver for the student’s soul.
“For the soul?” Fiona whispered. “What does that mean?”
“The class is far more perilous than any physical combat,” Miss Westin explained. She turned Eliot. “But you know that already, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Eliot whispered.
When he first read that part about the soul, Eliot had thought it was a joke. But it wasn’t. It’s what he felt every time he played—and something weird and strange and wondrous happened. There was a connection between the magic and the music and his soul—and risk as well. He knew that his soul teetered on the edge of some unknown precipice when he played . . . and he had to know why.
Next to him, Fiona shuddered. She opened her mouth as if she had something to say, but couldn’t articulate it, and then after a moment, she whispered, “Are you sure about this?”
Eliot met his sister’s concerned gaze.
There was another reason to take the new course. Last semester, he and Fiona had had every class together. These electives would separate them. Cee had told them, and it’d been proved over and over, that they were stronger together.
But that was the point.
Eliot sometimes felt like he was only strong with his sister. He couldn’t go through his entire life depending on her. He had to stand on his own feet.
“Yeah,” he whispered back. “I’m sure.”
Worry and then resolve flashed over Fiona’s features, and she nodded . . . maybe even on some level understanding him for once, for once even agreeing.
Eliot guessed she had come to similar conclusions about the two of them—maybe she would be happy to finally be getting rid of her “little” brother . . . or maybe she had something to prove as well.
Miss Westin signed the bottom of Eliot’s record and closed it. “I do believe,” she said, “you will have a most enlightening experience this semester—provided you two survive.”
50
NO MATCH FOR HIS CHARM AND INTELLECT
Louis Piper took one of the many twisty and illegal passages that led to the main entrance thoroughfare of the Paxington Institute. He had to squeeze through shadows and push past trash cans and those homeless wretches who belonged neither in the Middle Realms nor in the island of space that Paxington occupied.
Bums. Beggars. Prostitutes.
Myths and heroes and nightmares who’d fallen on hard times: Mordred . . . Mr. Nox . . . the ever-blinded Gorgon. Why couldn’t they respectably crawl into a bottle and try to make themselves disappear as he had?
He avoided their lecherous, leprous touches and piteous calls, turned the corner—
—and emerged in the sunlight and relatively fresh