Chapter 14 The Trial of the Veil

The Turning of the Veil came, as all things in the academy came, at dusk. Maya stood at the mouth of the Curators' hall in her formal robes, and Talia stood beside her, and Cassian stood a step behind them both, close enough to be a shadow but far enough to be denied. The hall was enormous, a bowl of darkness ringed by seats that rose into the gloom, and in the center of the floor stood the Mirror of Recalled Truth, tall as a door, dark as a well, older than the school itself. The Curators came in ones and twos, robed and silent. Maya counted them as they settled into their seats. Twenty came. Seven seats stayed empty, and she did not know if that was a good sign or a bad one. At the highest point of the bowl, above them all, stood the chair that was always empty, and beside it, waiting, Warden Voss. He looked exactly as he had the only other time she had seen him. Kind-eyed. Silver-haired. A man who smiled at students the way a farmer smiles at a good field. He did not smile at Maya now. He looked at her the way a farmer looks at a fence, checking it would hold. "Maya Chen," Voss said. His voice carried to every corner of the hall. "Daughter of Mei Chen. You have been called here to answer for the legacy you carry, and to help us understand it." "I didn't know I was carrying anything," Maya said. "What legacy?" "The shadow you were born with." Voss stepped down from his place and began to walk toward her, slowly, hands clasped behind his back. "Your mother was the most gifted shadow-worker this academy has ever produced. We have guarded her records. We have asked nothing of you, until now. And now we need your help." He stopped a respectful distance away and spread his hands. "The deep shadows beneath the school have grown restless. We believe your mother left something there, something that would help us understand the unrest and calm it. You carry her blood. Her shadow. We believe you can find it." Every word was smooth. Every word was reasonable. Maya thought of the journal under her mattress, of her mother's voice in the mirror, of Cassian's father, found in the Deep Shadow three weeks after he had learned the truth. "I don't know where she left anything," Maya said. "I never knew her. She died when I was five. You know this." "And yet her shadow answers you," Voss said softly. "Faster than it should. Stronger than it should. As if it had been trained before you were born to serve your hand." He turned to the Curators, and his voice rose to fill the hall. "You have all seen her work. Her shadow moves like a living thing. Like a thing that knows its purpose." He turned back to Maya, and his eyes were kind and terrible. "We are not asking you to do anything dangerous, Maya. We are asking you to stand before the Mirror of Recalled Truth and let it see what your mother left you. It will show us where her Working lies, and we will go and finish what she began, in her name." Maya stood very still. Cassian shifted behind her. Talia's hand, small and cold, found hers. "No," she said. The hall went quiet. The quiet had a shape to it, like the moment before a door opens onto a room you did not expect. "No?" Voss repeated. His voice had lost none of its warmth. "Maya, I understand your fear. But you are not in danger. Nothing will harm you. The mirror only sees." "The mirror sees everything," Maya said. "That's what it's for. And I don't think you want it to see me. I think you want it to see her." She lifted her chin. "You want to know where my mother is." The silence changed. Maya felt the Curators lean forward in their seats as one, felt the attention of the hall turn from her to Voss and back again. Voss smiled. It was not an unkind smile. It was worse than that. It was patient. "Very well," he said. "We will do it the gentle way, then." He gestured. Two robed Curators rose and came toward her. Cassian stepped in front of her. Talia's grip tightened. And through it all Maya saw Voss lift his hand, speak a word she did not know, and the Mirror of Recalled Truth came alive. It did not show her. It showed her mother. The mirror filled with light, and in the light stood Mei Chen, younger than in the journal, older than in the shadow-recording, and alive. Behind her, the Deep Shadow stretched away into a darkness so deep it seemed to breathe, and behind her, vast and patient and beginning to stir, was the Hollow. A gasp ran through the hall. The Curators rose. Voss's face, for the first time, lost its patience. "What is this?" he demanded. "What have you done?" "I haven't done anything," Maya said, and her voice was shaking, but she made it loud. "The mirror is showing you the truth. She's alive. She's down there, holding the door shut. The door you told everyone she died closing. And it's failing. You know it's failing, because you're the one who made it fail." "Enough." Voss's voice cracked across the hall like a whip. "This is a trick. A working of illusion, taught to her by those who wish the Council harm." His eyes swept the hall, and they landed on Seraphina, standing in the shadows near the door. "You. You have been filling this girl's head with lies. You have been plotting against this Council for ten years, and now you have corrupted her." "Corrupted her?" Seraphina stepped forward, and her voice was quiet, and it carried further than his had. "She has seen her mother for the first time in ten years. I have seen my best friend, alive, where you told me she was dead. That is not a trick, and you know it. You broke the seal. You broke it on purpose, the night she went down, because you wanted the Hollow for yourself. You have spent ten years pretending her sacrifice was the accident of her own ambition." The hall was chaos. Voices rose and fell. The mirror still blazed with the image of Mei Chen, and the Hollow behind her, and no one could look away. Voss stood at the center of it, and for a moment Maya saw the mask slip. She saw the thing underneath the kind eyes, the thing that had been waiting for ten years, and it was hungry and patient, and it was done being patient. "This changes nothing," Voss said. His voice was quiet now, and it was more frightening than his shouting. "The seal fails, whether you believe me or not. And when it fails, the Hollow will rise through this school. You will see what I have always seen. You will thank me." He turned and walked toward the door, and the Curators parted for him like water. "The girl is confined to her tower. The mirror is sealed. And when the Veil has turned, we will speak again." He was gone. The hall emptied in a tide of whispers, and Maya stood at its center, shaking, with Cassian's hand on her shoulder and Talia's arms around her. In the mirror behind them, her mother's eyes, tired and proud and full of love, watched her daughter refuse, for the first time, to be used. The mirror cracked. In the crack, something watched. ---