CHAPTER 101: 101: THE ACADEMY TEST XI

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On the stage, Master Hale saw the same shape in the yard and lifted her hand to Master Venn. He stepped down one step. She did not yet. She looked at the guard to her right and tilted her head. The guard nodded and moved along the front of the crowd, slow and sure.

Fartray drew his arm back another inch. This was the breath where men choose. This was the breath where a bully with a clean coat and a dirty cheek decides if he is bigger than his name or smaller.

Fizz’s ears were high now. His paws were open, ready to push left or up. He did not look like a spiritual beast. He looked like a small person ready to dodge a stone thrown by a small child. He said one more thing, because he could not help it.

"Hey look," Fizz called, bright and sunny now, the way you announce a sweet roll from a window, "a fart is about to pop."

That did it.

Fartray’s hand cut forward. The ball of water snapped into a tight bolt and shot, it was glass-clear and sharp. It aimed for Fizz’s face at speed. It meant to hit and splash and drown and end the small annoying light.

Fizz dodged.

The bolt cut past where his nose had been and slapped into the hedge. Leaves and wet went up in a soft burst. The boy near the hedge yelped and jumped back. The girl with the jaw shoved the younger child behind her hip with one hand and did not move her feet.

Fizz skimmed the ground and lifted again in one smooth line. His paw flicked. The small plate of mud that had not yet dried rose again from the wet spot and sailed. Fartray twisted his head. The mud caught his ear and his hair. It made a brown mark on the clean light.

"You—" Fartray started, and his voice cracked like a boy’s voice trying to become a man in front of a room that had not agreed to watch.

The crowd’s sound swelled. It was not a cheer. It was the noise a city makes when a neat rule is being bent. Heads turned. Feet shifted. People at the back went up on their toes. People at the front told them to stop and then went up on their own toes.

The brown-haired proctor was almost there now. He would be there in two steps. A guard coming along the rope from the far side was ten steps away. Master Venn was three steps down from the stage. Master Hale had not moved. She did not need to move to move the room.

John reached the edge of the small open ring. He saw Fizz. He saw Fartray. He saw the mud on Fartray’s ear. He saw the water on the hedge. He took one more step forward and put his body half a step between Fizz and the boy with the blue line on his coat — not in front, not blocking, just there, like a wall that had not been there a second ago.

Fizz’s eyes flicked to John. He did not speak. His paws lowered a little. He breathed.

The yard held its breath with him.

John took one more step. He did not ask what happened. He did not ask who started it. He put his right hand out, palm open, as if he were going to stop rain with his fingers.

The air bent.

It bent toward his palm the way dust slid toward a drain. The light seemed to slow down there. A round dark shape swelled above his skin, smooth and deep, the color of a well at midnight. It was the size of a fist, then a melon, then a ball as big as a football. Leaves on the wet hedge pulled toward it and trembled. A few loose threads on a boy’s cuff lifted. A girl’s ribbon tugged once.

Fizz felt the pull and slid back behind John’s shoulder. His ears went up. His mouth made an O. "Oh," he breathed, very soft, full of wonder and a pinch of pride. "Bigger."

Six months on the road had not been idle. John’s second ring had locked weeks ago, quiet and steady. He had kept it asleep. Now the new strength answered his palm like it had been waiting in the wall the whole time.

Fartray froze for a blink. His inside voice had never planned for this. He had seen water, fire, wind, stone. He had seen magic at balls where candles clapped. He had not seen a small, neat black star sitting on a boy’s hand, eating light like it was sugar.

"Black magic," someone whispered.

"Void," someone else said.

"It is a trick," a third voice tried. The voice did not sound sure.

The dark ball hummed, very low. It was not a sound you heard with your ears. It was a steady pressure you felt in your teeth and bones. John kept his wrist loose. He did not aim at a face. He aimed low, the way you aim a broom: to move, not to break.

Fartray came back to himself with a snap. His chin lifted. His pride climbed into his eyes and put its elbows on the sill. He pulled water to his left palm without thinking. It gathered fast, a bright plate, a clean shield. He took a quick step to the right to get a better angle, then stopped because John’s eyes did not move. They were calm and flat.

Fizz peeked around John’s shoulder. "You do not want this, Fart-ray," he said, small and urgent. The joke was there, but the tone had changed. "You do not want to meet the doom ball. It is shy but very rude."

"Enough," Fartray said, but the word had less iron now. His friends shifted behind him. One took a half step back. The other held still and tried to look older.