Page 6 of Lucent Academy: Trinity Awakens
"Confiscate?" Father stood up. "Those apples grew on our tree, on our land. You can't just—"
"Actually, we can." The woman's voice was patient in the way that powerful people's voices were patient when dealing with those who had no power at all. "Everything produced by a Manaborn's abilities belongs to the Empire until that Manaborn has completed their service. It's in the Compact of Binding. Your daughter signed it this morning."
"She didn't know what she was signing! She's barely eighteen!"
"Thomas." Mother put a hand on his arm. "Let it go."
"But—"
"Let it go."
Father sat back down, his face red with suppressed anger, and the woman continued as though nothing had happened. "As I was saying, we'll confiscate the apples. However, in recognition of the family's sacrifice, the Empire will provide compensation for each harvest. Given the apparent potency of the fruit, that compensation should be... substantial." She named a figure. Mother's hand tightened on Father's arm. It was more money than our family had seen in the past ten years combined. "Additionally, you'll receive a monthly stipend for the duration of your daughter's service. The standard Manabornfamily support payment, plus a bonus for her exceptional classification." Another figure, even larger than the first. "This should ensure that you're well provided for in her absence."
"We don't want your money," Father said. "We want our daughter."
"I'm afraid that's not an option." The woman stood up, smoothing her gray robes. "The airship will arrive in six weeks to collect her and the other Manaborn from this region. Hartwick has produced six Manaborn this year, which is quite impressive for a town of its size. You should be proud."
"Proud," Father repeated, and the word sounded like a curse in his mouth.
They left behind a stack of paperwork and a small pouch of gold coins—an advance on the first payment, the man explained with his apologetic smile—and then they were gone, their official carriage rattling down the road toward the next district where some other family was about to have their lives turned upside down. Mother cried again that night. I heard her through the wall, trying to muffle the sound in her pillow, and I lay in my own bed and stared at the ceiling and felt absolutely nothing at all.
The weeks that followed were strange, suspended, like the moment between lightning and thunder when you're waiting for the sound to catch up with the light. I tried to memorize everything: the way the sun came through the kitchen window in the morning, the sound of the twins arguing over breakfast, the smell of Father's pipe tobacco and Mother's bread baking and Lily's hair after her bath. I helped in the garden more than I ever had before, learning the names and needs of every plant, knowing that I would never tend them again after I left.I sat with Mother in the evenings and let her teach me recipes I would probably never cook, and I played endless games with my siblings, and I tried, as hard as I could, to pretend that everything was normal.
The night before the airship came, Mother called me into her room. She was sitting on the edge of the bed she shared with Father, and in her hands was a small wooden box I had never seen before. She patted the space beside her, and I sat down, and for a long moment we just looked at each other.
"I have something for you," she said finally. "Something I should have given you a long time ago, but I was hoping... well. It doesn't matter now."
She opened the box and took out a necklace. It was simple, just a silver chain with a small pendant in the shape of a leaf, but the metal seemed to shimmer in the lamplight with colors that shouldn't have been there, greens and golds that shifted when I moved my head.
"This belonged to my mother," she said. "And her mother before that. It's been in our family for generations, passed down from mother to daughter, and now it's yours."
"It's beautiful."
"It's more than that." She fastened it around my neck, her fingers warm against my skin. "There's magic in it. Old magic, older than the Empire, maybe older than the Academy itself. I don't know exactly what it does—my mother never told me, and hers never told her—but it's supposed to protect the wearer. Keep them safe from harm."
"Then you should keep it. You need protection more than I do."
"No." Her voice was firm. "You're going to war, Leah. You're going to face monsters and magic and things I can't even imagine. And I won't be there to protect you." Her composure cracked, just for a moment, and I saw the fear underneath. "But maybe this can. A little piece of me, going with you wherever you go."
I touched the pendant, feeling the cool metal warm beneath my fingers. "I'll take care of it."
"You'll take care of yourself. That's what matters. Promise me."
"I promise."
She pulled me into a hug then, holding me the way she used to when I was small and afraid of thunderstorms, and I let myself be held, let myself be a child again for just a few more minutes before I had to become something else entirely.
I woke before dawn to a sound I had never heard before: a deep rhythmic thrumming that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, vibrating through the walls of the cottage and into my bones. I scrambled out of bed and ran to the window, and what I saw there made me forget, for just a moment, everything I was about to lose.
The airship hung in the sky above the town's central plaza like something out of a fever dream. It was enormous, easily larger than the baron's manor house, its hull made of dark polished wood and gleaming brass that caught the first rays of the rising sun. The balloon above it wasn't a balloon at all but some kind of rigid structure, covered in canvas that had been painted with the golden eagle of the Empire, and from its sides extended fins and rudders and other protrusions whose purposes I couldn't begin to guess. Even from here, on the outskirts of Hartwick, I could see crowds gathering in the streets below, a hundredthousand people craning their necks to watch as the great vessel descended toward the landing platform that had been erected in the plaza overnight. Ropes hung down from the deck, and as I watched, a gangplank lowered itself slowly toward the ground, unfolding in sections like a carpenter's rule.
"Leah!" Mother's voice came from downstairs. "They're here!"
I dressed in the traveling clothes she had made for me, sturdy and practical and utterly unlike anything I had ever worn before, and I went downstairs to say goodbye. The twins were already awake, their usual energy subdued into something quieter and more fragile, and they attached themselves to my legs as soon as I appeared. Lily was in Father's arms, too sleepy to understand what was happening but sensing the mood enough to keep her thumb in her mouth and her eyes on my face. And Mother stood by the door with my trunk at her feet, her expression carefully composed, her hands clasped in front of her to keep them from shaking.
The walk to the central plaza took nearly an hour, through streets I had known my whole life but that seemed suddenly unfamiliar, as though I were seeing them for the first time. We passed the market where I had bought ribbons and vegetables every week, the fountain where I had played as a child, the great stone walls of the university where scholars debated questions I would never understand. Hartwick had been my home for eighteen years, this sprawling maze of cobblestones and spires, and I was leaving it behind for a place I had never seen.
The plaza was packed with people by the time we arrived, kept back by imperial guards in their golden armor. I saw other families clustered near the gangplank, other young people with trunks and tear-streaked faces, and I realized with a start that these must be the other five Manaborn from Hartwick. Fivestrangers who would be my companions on the journey ahead. I scanned their faces, looking for anyone I might recognize, but they were all unfamiliar.
