"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." — Oscar Wilde
The inside of the Zenith Spire did not feel like a building.
The candidates passed through the colossal gates and into the Antechamber, and the sound of the plaza cut off behind them as though a door had closed on the entire world.
Joel walked in among the river of seventeen-year-olds and looked up, and his neck kept tilting back because the ceiling simply refused to arrive.
The chamber was wide enough to swallow the Central Plaza whole, and its walls were made of the same black stone as the outside, except that the stone carried veins of pale light that pulsed slowly in rhythm, like the breathing of something enormous asleep beneath the floor.
The air inside was cold, and the Spire hummed. It was the same low harmonic note that the Tear emitted, except that here the note came from everywhere at once, rising up out of the ground and down out of the distant dark overhead, and Joel felt it buzzing in his back teeth.
Ahead of them, at the center of the chamber, the Tear had been raised onto a white dais.
Up close, the crystal was the size of a small house. It sat on a cradle of ancient black metal that the First Ascendants had forged to hold it, and its milky depths swam with slow veins of light that thickened and brightened as the candidates approached.
Around the dais, a ring of garrison soldiers kept a corridor clear, and beyond them the chamber had filled with observation galleries where the families and the wealthy had secured their seats.
The VIP gallery hung above the dais, and Mayor Sterling had already installed himself at its railing with the gold chain of office gleaming across his chest.
He leaned forward over the rail with his constant smile, watching the floor like a man watching his own personal lottery draw, and Proctor Harrison stood beside him with his hands clasped behind his back, expressionless.
A herald’s amplified voice rolled across the chamber.
"Candidates, assemble in registration order at the blue markers! When your name is called, approach the dais alone, place your palm upon the Tear, and hold it there until the resonance passes! Family, honored guests, remain in the galleries at all times!"
The crowd of candidates shuffled into lines, and the waiting began.
Joel stood in his line with Chloe on one side of him and Vance on the other.
The Awakenings came in a slow drumbeat from the front of the lines, and each one turned into a small public drama, because the Tear announced every Class out loud in a flat, resounding voice that the whole chamber could hear.
A stocky farm boy planted his palm on the crystal, and the Tear’s light flared amber around his hand.
[Candidate recognized. Class assigned: Shieldbearer. Rank: D.]
The galleries clapped politely, and the boy’s shoulders sagged with relief, because D-rank meant a garrison contract and a steady wage, and for a farmer’s son that was a life changed in one sentence.
A girl with spectacles touched the stone next, and a thin crackle of white sparks snapped around her fingers.
[Candidate recognized. Class assigned: Spark-Caster. Rank: D.]
Then came a run of the ordinary, which was the only word for it. A [Farm-Hand]. A [Scribe]. A [Rat-Catcher], which drew a ripple of laughter from the galleries and a visible flinch from the boy holding the stone.
Joel watched each one step down from the dais with the rest of their life stamped onto them, and he noted how the crowd’s applause scaled itself precisely to rank, warm for a C, cool for a D, silent for an F, and he understood that he was watching a machine that sorted human beings into prices while everyone smiled about it.
A merchant’s daughter awakened a [Gale-Runner] at C-rank and burst into tears of joy, and her family’s gallery box erupted like a winning bet.
Chloe watched all of it with her fingers laced together in front of her, and she was humming quietly to herself, tuneless and calm.
Joel studied her sidelong and admitted that she was good, because her nerves showed exactly as much as a well-bred girl’s nerves should show on the biggest day of her life, no more and no less.
Vance stood on Joel’s other side rolling his shoulders and cracking his knuckles in displays of easy confidence, joking loudly with the boys behind them, and only his eyes gave him away, because his eyes kept ticking toward the dais with a frequency that had nothing to do with stage fright.
’He’s not nervous,’ Joel thought. ’He’s counting.’
A boy who needed to check on an outcome always looked like that. A boy who was simply waiting his turn looked like the farm kid had, sweaty and prayerful.
Vance was watching the clock in a room where he already knew the time, and Joel filed that away with the rest of it.
The lines crawled forward, and the herald called name after name, and the drumbeat of ordinary continued until the herald’s voice finally reached a name that mattered.
"Bellamy, Chloe."
Chloe inhaled once, smoothed her teal skirt, and walked to the dais like a woman crossing a stage she had rehearsed for two years.
The galleries had gone quiet with expectation, because the Bellamy money had bought a lot of seats, and the projections said B-rank, and the crowd wanted to see if the projections would pay out.
She laid her palm flat on the crystal.
The Tear’s veins of light gathered under her hand, and then the milky depths flushed from white to a deep, glittering blue, and frost bloomed across the surface of the stone in feathering patterns that spread faster than the eye could follow.
The air around the dais dropped cold enough that the soldiers in the ring shifted on their feet, and a fine glitter of ice crystals drifted down over Chloe’s hair while the crystal’s voice rolled out through the chamber.
[Candidate recognized. Class assigned: Frost-Weaver. Rank: B.]
The galleries exploded, and the applause was several tiers warmer than anything the ordinary run had earned, because B-rank meant the Frost-Weaver would walk into a decent academy with her head high, and it also meant she had just become the most marriageable young woman in Caelmont.
Chloe turned from the dais glowing, and she looked up at the galleries, and for a moment Joel watched her search the crowd of faces with an appraiser’s quick flick of the eyes before she remembered to look happy.
Then she swept back toward the candidates, and her smile found Joel like a searchlight, and she mouthed the words "your turn" at him across the heads of the other candidates.
Up in the VIP gallery, Mayor Sterling was applauding with his rings flashing, but Joel noticed that the man’s eyes had already moved on, because B-rank was merely good, and the Mayor’s entire career was staked on something better than good.
The drumbeat resumed. A [Tunnel-Rat], an [Ember-Hand], a [Guard-Dog Handler]. And then the herald reached the next name that mattered.
"Vance, Aldrich."
Vance cracked his neck theatrically, clapped Joel on the numb shoulder one more time for luck, and swaggered to the dais with the rolling gait of a boy who had never once doubted an audience.
He slapped his palm on the crystal, and the Tear answered him like it had been insulted.
The veins of light did not glow so much as ignite, flooding from pale white to a furious red that lit the entire Antechamber like a forge door swinging open.
Heat rolled off the dais in a visible shimmer, and the frost that Chloe’s touch had left on the stone flashed into steam, and the harmonic hum of the Spire climbed into a triumphant note that rattled the blue markers on the floor.
[Candidate recognized. Class assigned: Crimson-Blade. Rank: A.]
The chamber detonated.
The applause was like thunder, and the galleries were on their feet, and above it all Mayor Sterling had risen from his seat with both fists raised, though A-rank was not the number he had bet his career on, and anyone watching his face could see the arithmetic happening behind his smile.
An A-rank in Caelmont was a once-a-decade event, the kind of awakening that recruiting academies fought over, and Proctor Harrison had unclasped his hands at last and was writing something on his rune-slate with the first flicker of genuine interest the day had produced.
Vance stood in the red glow with his chest out and his fists raised, and Joel watched him from the line and saw the truth of the boy plain as daylight, because Vance’s face wore triumph with no surprise anywhere in it.
There was no stunned joy of a gambler whose number had hit, and there was only the satisfied expression of a man collecting a payment that had been arranged in advance.
’He knew,’ Joel thought, cold and certain. ’You cannot fake that face, and you cannot buy it either. He knew the poison would not be touching him, and he knew the golden boy would not be contesting the spotlight today.’
The red light faded from the Tear, and Vance came off the dais to a wall of backslaps from the candidates around him, and Chloe met him before he had gone three steps, and the two of them accepted congratulations side by side with their shoulders almost touching, glowing at each other like the hero and heroine of the day.
The herald’s voice cut through the noise.
"Carrow, Joel."
The applause died.
Ten thousand people in the galleries leaned forward over the railings, and the bookmakers in the plaza outside were probably screaming at each other through brass megaphones right now.
Joel walked to the dais.
The walk was thirty paces, and he made every one of them count, keeping his spine straight and his face easy, wearing the golden boy like a coat, while his mind ran cold and clear underneath.
He climbed the three steps of the dais, and the crystal rose in front of him, humming its low patient note, close enough now that he could see the slow veins of light swimming beneath its milky surface like something alive.
Up in the VIP gallery, Sterling had gripped the railing with both hands, and his constant smile had gone stiff at the corners.
Harrison had stopped writing.
Chloe and Vance stood together below with their faces tilted up, watching him walk, and Joel did not need to look at them to know exactly what their eyes were doing.
He raised his numb hand and spread his palm.
’Well then,’ he thought, and he pressed his hand flat against the stone.
The Tear did not flare, and it did not ignite, and it did not glow.
The veins of light beneath the surface guttered like candles in a draft, dimming from white to a colorless grey, and a thin, sluggish mist began to seep out of the crystal around his fingers.
The great harmonic hum that had rung through the Spire all morning thinned and dropped, sinking toward a wavering whisper, and the cold grey mist crept up his wrist and pooled around his arm like fog off a dead pond, while the entire Antechamber held its breath and waited for the sound of a Class that anyone could hear.
Nothing came.