A Student's Dream (Twisted Cogs Book 1) Read online

  Ele was silent for long moments, not disagreeing. He finally let out a sigh of his own.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I can keep watch over your tools tonight, wake you if anyone tries to steal them.”

  “You can stay around while I’m asleep?” Elena rose to her elbows to fix Ele with a look of surprise.

  “Well...yes. It’s really hard to stay awake when you’re sleeping, but I’ve done it before. Wait, what did you mean ‘stay around’? What exactly did you think happened?” Ele returned her gaze with a blank stare, one eyebrow raised.

  “I don’t know, I guess I always just assumed that you sort of...disappeared when I fell asleep.” When Ele frowned, Elena continued hastily. “It’s still new to me! I’m still getting used to thinking of you as...” she paused, searching for the right word.

  “As a real person,” Ele finished. There was a hard look in his eye, something Elena couldn’t ever remember seeing there before.

  “Ele, you have to see it from my point of view! How was I supposed to know? Everyone around me told me I was crazy, do you know what that does to someone so young?”

  “It’s probably better that I didn’t know until today, that you didn’t consider me a person,” Ele half-shrugged, his overly-casual demeanor an indication that he was angry, “it would’ve made it harder when you were ignoring me to please your mother.”

  Elena felt as if he had slapped her. She lay back on her pillow, blinking fast. “You know I had to do that,” she whispered at the ceiling.

  “I know you did. Didn’t make it feel any better. Being the only one to see someone is tough for a child? How do you imagine it felt, being a child who only one person could see?”

  She didn’t have an answer for him, and the silence between them stretched. They had argued before, even fought, but Elena felt as if there were something tangibly breaking between them, and she was helpless to put it back together.

  “Go to sleep, Elena,” Ele finally said, “I’ll wake you if someone tries to break in.”

  The emotional exhaustion of dealing with her mother, Frederica, and now Ele all in a single day finally hit her, an overwhelming crush that seemed to settle in her heart. Elena barely had time to shed a few silent tears before sleep overtook her.

  ***

  It seemed like she had just closed her eyes when she awoke again, but the shaft of moonlight on her wall had moved quite a bit. Elena glanced around the room, bewildered. In the corner Ele was doing the same, blinking rapidly as if he had just woken up as well.

  When the sound repeated Elena sat up in bed. It was a fast staccato of wooden clicking, moving around at a fast pace in the hallway outside her door. It sounded as if several people were walking down the hallway on stilts.

  “What’s going on out there?” Ele murmured quietly, as Elena slipped from her bed and moved to the door. Now that she was actually listening, she could also hear shouting and muffled thumps coming from further back around the studio. She pressed her ear to the door, but the clicking had stopped. After long moments of silence, she tried the handle.

  “It’s locked.” A cold lump was forming in her stomach as Elena gently shook the handle up and down a few more times.

  “What? That’s not possible, why would they lock us in our rooms? What right do they have?”

  “All of the garzoni might not be locked in their rooms, it could just be us.”

  “Not any more reassuring.”

  Without even consciously realizing it, Elena glanced around the room for something to turn into a lockpick. Unlike the hallway outside, her room was ripe with possible supplies after her shopping trip; she wouldn’t need Ele’s help this time.

  “Echoes can walk through walls, you go check it out while I make another lockpick,” Elena grabbed a comb from her bedside table; the long teeth were metal, but small enough that she could bend one back and forth until it snapped off. She was interrupted briefly by Ele plunging towards the door, only to bounce off and fall heavily on his rear.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I should probably talk to Bea or some of the other Echos,” Ele winced as he gingerly got to his feet, “see how that do that as...fluidly as they do.” Elena didn’t want to damage his pride, so she said nothing. Ele began pressing his palms against the door and wall, testing and feeling, while Elena pulled threads from the hem of her nightdress.

  He shifted and fell forward, suddenly, as if the door and wall had instantly vanished. Elena blinked, and Ele turned to grin back at her, his arms sunk halfway through the stone.

  “It’s like pushing through a wall made of water,” he whispered excitedly, “I just have to think it will work and it does!” Elena nodded, glad to see him excited, as she used the threads she had pulled to tie small knots along the length of the comb’s tooth. The thread would shift around, sliding back and forth across the metal, and in theory they would eventually settle into the bumps and grooves they needed to be in.

  Ele slipped through the door, and Elena got to work on the lock. The sounds had died down, leaving the studio in an eerily silence that was only occasionally broken by one crash or single shout. The metal comb tooth was slippery in her sweaty fingers, and it took her longer to unlock this door than it had to unlock the door to the studio. On the other hand, this lock wasn’t destroyed as it opened with a soft click, so Elena supposed the tradeoff was worth it.

  The hallway was just as bright as her moonlit room, but the majority of its light didn’t come from the moon. Along the top and bottom edges of the hallway’s walls was a painted pattern of squares, subtly worked into the texture of the walls so that one had to look for them to see them. At least, that’s how they’d been earlier in the day. Now, those square patterns were lit up in vibrant shades of yellows and reds, somehow giving off light of their own as if they were reflecting sunlight.

  It was beautiful, but the unnatural colored light made Elena feel even more tense as she stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her. The colors shifted, as if the paint was still liquid and flowing along the pattern. Elena forced herself to focus on the end of the hallway rather than the beautiful yet eerie sight.

  “Elena!” Ele hurtled around the corner of the hallway. His footsteps had been silent, and he appeared so suddenly that Elena shrieked. Ele rushed down the hall and paused for a moment in front of her, gasping for breath. “Not...good...” he panted, “all...over...studio.”

  “Who’s all over the studio? What’s going on?” Elena hissed.

  Two figures stepped around the corner, the pale yellow light of the patterns not doing much to illuminate them. Both wore green cloth masks tied around their upper faces with eye holes cut in them. One had long blonde hair spilling out from beneath the mask, and she carried a slim black crossbow casually in the crook of her arm.

  “Servant?” she asked. She held the crossbow loosely, but it was pointed at Elena. Her eyes glittered beneath the mask, and a small scar on her chin made it look pointed. The other figure was large and muscled, and wearing a hood that covered their hair, but when he spoke his rich bass gave his gender away.

  “No, the running boy is her Echo. She’s a garzona.” In another context Elena would’ve found the smooth deep voice attractive, but now it sent shivers down her spine. The two hadn’t slowed their approach as they talked, and were closing the distance between them quickly.

  “Elena, run,” Ele panted, turning to face the pair. As he did so, the large man took two quick steps forward on his long legs. His thick fist swung around with the momentum of his stride, and it connected hard with Ele’s chin, sending the Echo flying backwards and landing in a heap on the marble of the ground.

  Elena’s heart pounded hard in her chest, and she suddenly couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing in her ears. She sank to her knees beside Ele’s limp body, reaching out to touch him even though she knew it was useless. Her hands slipped through his neck, then through his chest, which she just noticed wasn’t moving. Did he norma
lly breath? Was it bad that he wasn’t breathing now? Did he even need to breath? Why did she know so little about the man who was like her brother?

  There were dangerous people approaching, she vaguely recalled, but it seemed unimportant at the moment. She tried to speak, but nothing came out. On the second try she managed a whisper.

  “Ele?”

  “Not a very feisty one, is she?” the big man loomed over her.

  “We don’t need her to be feisty to send a message,” the woman replied. The crossbow gave a sharp ‘click’ in the near silence of the hallway, and Elena’s breath was knocked out of her a heartbeat later. The impact threw her onto the ground, and she struggled for air. Her vision began blurring just as the pain suddenly blossomed through her chest, and it continued blurring as her mind slowly caught up. She glanced down, and her sight was so foggy that she had to stare for a few moments before she could make out the arrow that sprouted from between her breasts.

  “Oh,” she said sadly, before the hallway slipped away entirely.

  Chapter XIII

  She Knows What She Knows

  “Ele....is Ele okay?” It was a strange, floaty feeling, hearing her own voice asking questions before she was was aware of thinking them. As if speaking his name reminded her of him, her chest tightened with worry before she was even awake.

  “Ah, you’re up. You gave us a bit of a fright, Miss Elena. Yes, I’ve been told that your Echo is perfectly fine, though his impromptu nap has thrown your sleeping schedules a little bit out of alignment.”

  Elena rose to the surface of consciousness slowly, but the meaning of the words filtered through the haze and took the edge off of the panicked feeling in her chest.

  My chest...the arrow. Elena woke the rest of the way up suddenly, opening her eyes to face the ceiling of her room. She tried to lift her head, but her muscles responded so slowly that for a moment she wondered with horror whether she’d been paralyzed. It was as if her head had weights resting on it, and it took her long seconds to lift her head high enough to look down.

  There was no indication that she had been shot. No bandage, no sling, and certainly no arrow. The sight of the long wooden shaft sticking out of her chest was the last memory Elena had from the night before, and the horrible image had been burned into her memory so thoroughly that she knew she hadn’t imagined or dreamed it.

  Even so, her biggest concern was making sure Ele was alright. With a huge effort she turned her head, scanning the room, and when she saw him sleeping peacefully on a small couch that had been moved into her room she sighed with relief.

  Pietro was sitting next to the bed, putting a small stack of parchment into a bag, but he glanced her way as he did so. It looked as if he had been working in her room, just waiting for her to wake up. He didn’t look overcome with relief, but he was at least smiling at her. Elena wasn’t entirely sure if his apparent unconcern was appropriate.

  There’s certainly something wrong with me, she thought, letting her head drop back onto the pillow. A quick experimentation told her that all of her muscles were similarly afflicted. She could move her arms, hands and legs, but they were slow and heavy as if she each one had doubled in weight.

  “Well, now that you’re awake I’ll be going back to my office,” Pietro lifted the bag to his marble shoulder and gave a polite smile, “I’ll let Master De Luca know that you’re feeling a mite better-”

  “Wait,” Elena looked into his eyes, aghast, “you can’t leave just like that! What happened last night?”

  “I’m afraid I have no idea, Miss Elena. Master De Luca simply told me that you were feeling poorly, and to wait here until you were feeling better, in case you needed anything when you first woke up. I’m just as in the dark as you are.” If she had been feeling more calm, Elena would’ve marveled at the fact that a boy made of stone had such a bad poker-face. Instead it only made her angry.

  “I was shot with an arrow!” she cried, “my Echo was hurt, for the first time...ever! Please, just tell me what happened. Who was that last night? How am I alive? Why did she shoot me? Who healed me? I don’t believe you don’t know anything.”

  To his credit, Pietro looked uncomfortable and embarrassed. Elena struggled to pull herself up on her elbows, moving an inch at a time and wincing at the energy those inches required. By the time she had finally moved herself to a sitting position, Pietro had sat down and heaved a very convincing sigh for his stone frame.

  “A big studio like De Luca’s draws a lot of attention, Elena. It makes us a target for the worst elements of Milia. Thieves, criminals, people who want to make a name for themselves. As far as we can tell, the young lady who attacked you last night was one such criminals. She knocked you out by elbowing you hard in the solar plexus, and her Echo knocked yours out in much the same way. There was no arrow involved.”

  “No...that’s not right...I distinctly remember-”

  “Miss Elena, where is it that hurts the most right now?” Pietro interrupted her with a businesslike look.

  “My chest?”

  “And do you think that if you had been shot with an arrow in the chest, we would be having this conversation right now? Perhaps you have some magical power no one has heard of? Do Fabera have the ability to repel arrows in flight?”

  Elena frowned. She hadn’t realized before that the weight in her body came along with a throbbing pain in her joints, and it was making it hard to focus on what he was saying, but something didn’t quite make sense.

  “Why was my door locked last night?”

  “What?” The question seemed to catch Pietro off-guard, and he looked even more uncomfortable and off-balance. “Oh...we’re not entirely sure why that happened.”

  Elena pressed her advantage with a barrage of questions of her own. “So I got locked into my room for no reason? Am I not allowed to leave in the night? What’s the purpose of that? What if there had been a fire? Or a lunatic with a bow who wanted to shoot me?”

  “I...I don’t know? You wouldn’t have been in danger in a fire...I mean if it WAS locked...whoever locked it....Perhaps you accidentally locked it behind you? You know, without thinking?”

  “I didn’t even know it had a lock!” Elena said indignantly, “and anyway, how could I have locked it and then not had the key afterward? I had to unlock it with a lockpick!”

  “And look at how well that turned out for you! Perhaps if you didn’t unlock it, you wouldn’t have gotten shot and I wouldn’t have to spend half the day waiting for you to awaken!” Pietro stood abruptly, “Miss Elena, I am sorry that this had been a difficult night for you, but really I cannot sit here and answer all of these interrogations. I don’t begrudge you the time I’ve spent, but I really do have work to do now.”

  “I ‘wouldn’t have gotten shot’, eh?” Elena asked quietly. Pietro stared at her, uncomprehending for a few moments until he realized what he had just admitted to. His face took on a hard look, and he straightened just a fraction of an inch higher.

  “I will inform Master De Luca that you are awake,” he said stiffly. Elena lay quietly as he gathered his bag up again and left. It was hard to keep her eyes open, and after another glance at Ele to reassure herself he was sleeping, not dead, Elena let herself drift back off to sleep herself.

  ***

  A presence in the room woke her up with a start, although she hadn’t heard a sound. Elena could immediately tell by the oranges and pinks of the sunlight in her room that she’d slept almost the entire day away. Bea stood silently by the door, watching her carefully. Ele still slept on the couch.

  How long has she been standing there? Elena wondered, a chill creeping along her spine. How did my subconscious know to wake me up since I didn’t hear her...

  “Your particular brand of perceptive seems a little overpowered pitted against Pietro’s particular brand of poor lying,” Bea said quietly, but with a smile, “it’s a bit unfair, don’t you think?”

  “Is Ele okay?” Elena mustered the strength to sit up. T
he simple action still took an agonizing amount of energy, but it was marginally better than it had been earlier.

  “He’s quite alright. With the amount you’ve both slept today, I have the feeling your sleeping cycles will re-align soon.”

  Elena watched Ele in silence for a few moments, taking comfort from the sight of his chest slowly rising and falling.

  “I’ve never seen him asleep before,” she murmured. “He was always just waking up whenever I did. When I was a little girl I used to think he just vanished or...sorry,” she broke off suddenly, remembering who she was talking to.

  “It’s not that uncommon, for those Stormtouched who grow up on their own. Mortalis tend to be rather cruel to Stormtouched when they outnumber them, even if they don’t mean to be.” Bea seemed lost in thought for a moment, and the two women sat in silence.

  “Are you here to lie to me like Pietro?” Elena finally asked.

  If Ele were awake he would probably scold me, tell me not to be so impolite.

  “No,” Bea seemed to shake herself out of whatever memory had engrossed her. When she spoke again her voice was firm, but still kind. “I think Pietro was foolish to try feeding you an untruth. But I’m not here to tell you the truth either.”

  Elena nodded wordlessly. It was a sort of honesty, and she realized that it was all she would get right now.

  “I think you know that we can’t allow you to share the details of what happened last night with any of the other garzoni,” Bea continued.

  “Are you going to kill me then?” Elena asked quietly.

  “Kill you?” Bea looked shocked, “of course not Elena. Whether a provisional garzona or not, Master De Luca cares about keeping you safe. We all want to keep you safe, but right now we need you to trust us, Pietro, Master De Luca and I. ‘Not telling anyone’ is the thing that will keep you and the others safest.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard, since I barely know what happened,” Elena said bitterly, “and if last night was any indication, you aren’t very good at keeping us safe. Whatever did happen, it could have been a real arrow. I could’ve died.”