I was a terrible teacher, and I knew it before the first lesson started.
The training ground was beneath Manila City Hall.
To reach it, you had to walk through a janitor’s door on the side street, go down forty-one steps behind a rack of old mops, and push on a brick that looked exactly like every other brick.
A wall slid open, and cool air breathed out of the dark.
The air smelled of wet stone and candle wax, and of something older underneath, like a church that had been closed for a hundred years.
“It looks like a horror movie,” Lira said.
“It’s a catacomb,” I said.
“Is there a difference?”
“Horror movies have better lighting.”
She laughed.
I didn’t.
I walked ahead of her into the tunnel and tried not to listen to the sound, which kept bouncing off the stone and coming back to me a second later.
The catacombs were built by Spanish friars in the 1600s, back when the city still had walls.
They had dug a network of burial chambers under the old district, long halls lined with niches for the dead.
The bones had been moved long ago, but the rooms stayed, and so did the memory of the people who’d been laid in them.
Every wall carried the faint hum of an old Anchor.
Every floor had been worn smooth by seven generations of Archivists learning to stand up straight.
It was the best place in Manila to teach somebody to read a wall.
It was also the last place I wanted to be with her.
* * *
I’d decided to be strict.
That was my whole plan.
A good senior kept his distance.
He gave instructions, corrected mistakes, and sent the student home.
He didn’t make jokes or share coffee or leave his notebook where she could see it.
He taught her the basics, filed a short report, and let the Board handle the rest.
I’d been trained that way.
It was the only way I knew to survive a friendship with someone you were going to watch die.
Cold, I told myself.
Be cold.
We stopped in a round chamber about the size of a classroom.
Candle lamps burned in iron brackets along the walls.
A circle of old white tile marked the center of the floor, scratched with a thousand lines of chalk from lessons long past.
A stone bench stood against one wall.
Kalasag hopped up onto it and curled into a ball, as if he intended to supervise.
“Rules,” I said.
“One. You do what I say, when I say it. Two. You don’t improvise. Three. If you feel dizzy, you tell me. Four. If you tell me you’re fine and you’re not, I’ll know, and I’ll be annoyed.”
“That’s four rules.”
“Is it?”
“You said three.”
“Then I’m annoyed that you counted.”
Lira’s mouth twitched.
She stood in the center of the circle with her hands behind her back, in a gray T-shirt and old sweatpants.
Her braid was tied up in a knot.
She looked about twelve years old, and a lot more nervous than she was pretending.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“Don’t call me sir.”
“Yes, adviser.”
“That’s worse.”
“Yes, Aris.”
“Fine.” I rubbed my forehead.
“Lesson one. Reading.”
* * *
I explained it the way I’d been taught.
An Anchor held memory.
A wall, a tree, a bell, a floor.
If you pressed your hand against it and asked politely, you could hear what it remembered.
That was the first technique, and the safest one.
It cost nothing, because you weren’t changing anything.
You were only listening.
I’d called it Citation in the library, but the older word was Reading, and most Archivists started with it.
“Put your palm on the wall,” I said.
“Close your eyes. Let your mind go quiet. Don’t reach for anything. If it wants to show you something, it will.”
“What will it show me?”
“The most recent memory first. Like the top layer of a page. A janitor sweeping. A rat. Some Archivist from last month sitting on the floor and complaining about his girlfriend.”
She snorted.
“Go deeper than three layers,” I said, “and you stop. Understand? The deeper memories are heavier. They pull you in. You won’t be able to tell where you end and the wall begins. I’ve seen first-years get lost in a stone for an hour.”
“Three layers.”
“Three. Then stop.”
She stepped up to the nearest wall, set her palm flat against the stone, and closed her eyes.
I watched her for a count of ten.
Nothing happened.
Her breathing slowed.
Her shoulders loosened.
A faint tremor ran down her arm, and her lips began to move.
I recognized the pattern.
In for four.
Hold for two.
Out for five.
The same quiet rhythm she’d used in the queue, the one that had made the whole Corridor breathe with her.
The wall began to hum.
The sound was clearer and rounder than the dull drone of an ordinary Anchor, almost musical, as if the stone had been struck by a tuning fork.
The candle flames leaned toward her.
The dust on the floor settled in neat rings.
I felt the sound in my teeth, in my ribs, in the soles of my feet.
Three layers, I thought.
Three.
“A janitor,” Lira murmured.
Her eyes were still shut.
“A man named Tomas. He’s whistling. He’s thinking about his daughter’s recital.”
“Good. Stop there.”
“A rat. She has a nest behind the third niche. She has five babies.”
“That’s two. One more.”
“A woman,” Lira said, and her voice shifted.
“A nun. No, a lay sister. She’s carrying a lamp. She’s afraid. She’s whispering something in Latin. She wants someone to come and find her.”
“Lira.”
“She’s very young. She’s seventeen. She’s been locked down here because…”
“Lira. Stop.”
“… because she wouldn’t say the name of the man who…”
“Stop.”
I lunged and caught her by the wrist.
* * *
Her eyes snapped open.
They were wide and wet and unfocused, and for a moment she looked straight through me.
A tear ran down her cheek.
The wall stopped humming.
The candles stood upright again, and the dust fell.
“I didn’t mean to,” she whispered.
“I couldn’t stop.”
“Four layers.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I said three!” My voice cracked off the stone, louder than I’d intended.
“I told you. I said it twice. You can’t just keep listening because the story’s sad. You’ll lose yourself.”
“I didn’t keep listening. She was talking to me.”
“The wall is not a person.”
“It felt like a person.”
“That’s the trap.” I let go of her wrist and stepped back.
My hand was shaking.
“Every Archivist gets pulled in at some point. The ones who don’t learn to pull out end up in a ward with a nurse who feeds them soup. That’s not a metaphor. I’ve visited them.”
Lira rubbed her wrist.
A pink mark circled it where my fingers had been.
She looked at it, then at me, and her face did something I didn’t expect.
It softened.
“You’re scared,” she said.
“I’m annoyed.”
“You’re scared.”
“I’m teaching.”
“You’re shouting because you’re scared.” She said it quietly, with no accusation.
“That’s all right. It’s all right to be scared of this. I’m scared too.”
I didn’t answer.
A muscle in my jaw jumped.
Behind us, on the bench, Kalasag lifted his head, looked at the two of us for a long unreadable moment, and put his head back down on his paws.
* * *
I decided to move on to the second lesson.
It was a mistake, and I made it on purpose.
I couldn’t stand the way she’d looked at me, so I turned my back, walked to the weapons rack at the far side of the room, and picked up two wooden practice staves.
They were worn smooth and dark from years of use.
“Defense,” I said.
“A ward is the first thing an Archivist learns to make. A shield. A wall. A place where nothing gets in. I’ll show you the basic form.”
I raised my left hand and drew a thin line in the air.
A pale blue disc spread out in front of me, about the size of a dinner plate, shimmering like the surface of a soap bubble.
I’d made a thousand of them.
I could do it in my sleep, and sometimes did.
“That’s Marginalia,” I said.
“Standard Tier-3. You hold it in your mind like a picture. It stops small things. Blades, thrown stones, a Hollow’s claws. I’m going to hit it with this stave. Don’t move it. Don’t panic. Just keep your picture steady.”
“Okay.”
“Try.”
She raised her hand and drew a line, the way I had.
Her fingers trembled.
A disc appeared in the air in front of her.
It was gold.
* * *
I stared at it.
The disc glowed warm and clear, the color of honey held up to a lamp.
It was larger than mine, a full two feet across, and its edge rippled with tiny sparks, like fireflies caught in a ring.
The light spilled across the floor and lit her face from below, and I could see every line of her expression, the intense concentration, the wide-open wonder.
“It’s the wrong color,” I said.
“Is it?” She tilted her head.
“I think it’s pretty.”
“Put it away.”
“What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing.” My throat felt tight.
“It’s good. It’s very good. It’s exactly the wrong color. Take it down.”
She flicked her fingers.
The disc dissolved in a puff of golden dust.
I stood there with the stave in my hands.
My heart was beating hard.
In nine years I’d never seen a beginner make a ward on the first try.
Most took a week to produce a flicker.
A few managed a pale smear. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
Nobody, not a single person in the history of the Prime Nexus, had made a full-sized shield in under a minute.
And she’d done it in gold.
She can’t do this where anyone can see, I thought.
If Pascual walked in right now, if the Dean looked down…
“Listen to me,” I said.
“There’s a technique called Gloss. It tints the light. It changes the color of the construct without changing its strength. I’m going to teach you that before anything else. Before swords, before anything. You’ll practice it until it’s automatic. From now on, every time you make a ward, it will be blue. Always blue.”
“Why blue?”
“Because blue is registered.”
“And gold isn’t.”
I looked at her.
She looked back, calm and steady, and I understood that she’d already put the pieces together.
The coin, the window, the way I’d stalled the examiner.
She wasn’t stupid.
She’d simply been waiting for me to say it.
“Gold isn’t,” I said finally.
“Because I’m unlisted.”
“Yes.”
“Is that dangerous?”
I could have lied.
I wanted to.
“Yes,” I said.
* * *
The next two hours were the hardest I’ve ever spent as a teacher.
I drilled her on the Gloss until her fingers cramped.
I made her draw a line, summon the gold, and wrap it in a thin film of blue, a hundred times in a row.
I corrected her grip.
I corrected her breathing.
I barked at her when the color slipped, and I told her she was careless, and I told her that the Board didn’t give second chances, and I watched her flinch each time and keep going anyway.
She didn’t complain once.
By the end of the first hour, her ward flickered blue on every attempt.
By the end of the second, it looked as clean as mine.
Nine years, I thought, sitting on the bench with my arms folded, watching her sweat and shake and try again.
It took me nine months to get that clean.
It should have made me proud.
It should have made me feel the warm satisfaction of a teacher who sees a student succeed.
Instead I felt a creeping coldness in my chest, a quiet, tightening dread, like I was watching a candle that burned too bright.
She was getting stronger so fast.
It scared me.
I knew that kind of speed.
I’d seen it on the faces of the thirty-eight, in their first weeks, right before the Board used them up.
Slow down, I wanted to say.
Please.
Just slow down.
Instead, when she finally lowered her hands and doubled over, gasping, with her braid clinging to her damp neck, I said, “That’s enough.”
“I can keep going.”
“I said that’s enough.”
She straightened.
Her eyes were red-rimmed and tired and very bright.
She looked at me as though she could see everything I wasn’t saying.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For teaching me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You were mean.”
“I was thorough.”
“You were mean,” she said, with a tired smile, “and thorough.”
I held out a bottle of water.
She took it.
Her fingers brushed mine, and the contact went through me like an electric spark.
She drank in long swallows, and I looked away, at the stone walls and the hundred silent niches, because I could feel my own face doing something unfamiliar.
On the bench, Kalasag stood up, stretched, hopped down, and padded across the floor to Lira.
He pressed himself against her ankle.
Then, to my deep surprise, he turned his head and looked at me.
For the first time in six years, there was no glare in it.
He blinked, slowly, once.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
* * *
The report I filed that night was six lines long.
Applicant demonstrates modest aptitude.
Reading: adequate.
Defense: adequate.
No notable irregularities.
Recommend continued instruction at standard pace.
I read it over twice.
Every word in it was a lie, and I had written all of it myself.
I sat on the roof of the bell tower with the black notebook open on my knee, and the pen in my hand, and the stars wheeling above Manila.
I turned to the last page.
I looked at the line from last week.
I enjoyed a Tuesday.
Under it, slowly, I wrote:
She made a gold shield on her first attempt.
I told her to make it blue.
I stopped.
The pen hovered.
Then I added, in smaller writing:
I don’t know which of us I’m trying to protect.