He glared at her, his anger mounting. She held his stare without difficulty, and for a long while they simply sat thus, the silence aching between them.
Until she waved her hand, as if parting the tension, and sighed. “Scorio, I’ll level with you. You know I’ve been trying to get you to quit. I was sure you would. But somehow, you’re still sitting there across from me, more determined than ever.”
“Wait. So the training we just did…?”
Her expression turned impatient. “A little rougher than it needed to have been. Perhaps not as directed, either. But I told you. A trainer needs to get a sense of their student’s threshold.”
“And?”
Her expression soured. “I’ve yet to find it. Which is surprising. And annoying. It means I might have to take this oath more seriously than I intended.”
He was about to spit out something caustic when she raised a hand.
“But first I’ll level with you so that you know where I’m coming from. You’ve earned that much.”
“Fine,” he said. “Start leveling.”
“I wasn’t reborn into the Academy.”
And like that anger just sluiced away to be replaced by shock. “What?”
“You heard me.” Her tone turned defensive. “I was born the natural way in Bastion. My father was a high-level bureaucrat in House Kraken. I grew up in Ward 6, well provided for. Tutors, groomed for House duty, the works.”
“But… how?” Scorio shook his head. “You’re a Great Soul, right?”
“I have an Igneous Heart,” she said, and he couldn’t tell if it was a correction. “But everybody does. Everyone out there, from the lowest beggar to the richest plutocrat. But they’re raised in Coal and told they can’t do better. Nobody tries, and most of them have Hearts with such low reactivity that nothing would happen even if they dedicated their lives to ignition.”
“Wait,” he said, clasping at his brow with both hands and staring through the floor at nothing. “You’re saying that anybody can become—”
“No. I’m not.” Her tone was sharp. “I’m saying that with weak Hearts and nothing but Coal or Copper to burn, nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand would never amount to anything unless they were given huge resources and dedicated their lives to training.”
“Which you were?”
She leaned back against the wall, thick hair flowing forward as she lowered her chin to partially hide her face once more. “Which I was. My father is an angry man. He never accepted being worth less than the Great Souls who were given ten times as much for ten times less work. So he used his considerable resources to acquire elixirs for me, condensed mana of high quality, all kinds of things.”
“This was allowed?”
Her lips twisted into a sneer. “It’s not strictly illegal, though it ruined his career. Fortunately for him, I was born with an especially reactive Heart. I prospered, and against all odds, ignited my Heart at the age of nine.”
“Nine?” Scorio forgot all about his aches and pain as he stared at her. “Nine? You’ve been doing this for –what—ten years?”
“Something like that. And yet I’m just an Emberling. You know why?”
A test. Not an innocent question. “They didn’t admit you to the Academy?”
“They admitted me all right. Better to pretend I was one of their own than a rogue element they couldn’t control. But though they called me a prodigy, they never treated me like one. My training was neglected. I was told to develop character by being part of the cleaning crew. I served the other Great Souls, each and every year that a new cohort was reborn. In time, I think they even forgot I was meant to be trained at all.”
“And your father?”
“He grew furious. But his protests only ruined his career further. Just as I was informed that making too much noise would hurt my family. So for long years I stayed quiet and mopped, and cleaned, and peeled, and walked in the shadows. A Cinder that nobody paid any mind to.”
Scorio listened, fascinated. “But something changed.”
“It did. I grew older. Made friends that I lost, and even had the gall to fall in love.” Her smile couldn’t have been more bitter. “And for a while, even my little world gleamed with gold and seemed enchanted. Until I realized what a fool I was, and had enough.”
“What happened?”
Her eyes turned cold. “None of your business. But it was enough to propel me to my first trial. I passed it and manifested my Emberling power. That form you’ve seen that becomes me so… well. Hard to ignore.”
“What did they do? The trainers?”
“I don’t know. I left before they could disappoint me again. I knew my father would never forgive my ‘giving up’ as he’d call it, so I came here instead.” She leaned forward, eyes flashing. “Which is the point of this whole heart-warming tale. I’m about the least qualified person to train you in all of Bastion. I was spoon-fed elixirs until my Heart had no choice but to burn, then ignored and abused till I quit and fled for these ruins. So you ask me why I was trying to make you quit?”
Scorio stared, not knowing what to say.
“Because I have almost no idea how to train you.” She leaned back and crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “Want me to put together a regimen of high-quality treasures to push you past your limits? I can make some excellent if outdated suggestions that you’ll never get to act on. Want advice on the best ways to mop a kitchen floor at three in the morning? I’m your girl. Want concrete advice on how to train and improve yourself to remain on par if not better than those Academy monsters? You’ll have to look somewhere else.”
After which she finally looked away, staring out the sun-wire-lit window at the ruins as he continued to study her profile.
“Thank you for being honest,” he said at last. “But if I have any choice in the matter, I’ll keep you as my instructor.”
“Because there’s no one else.”
“That, and…” He trailed off, trying to fit his emotions into words. “You’re an outsider, like me. Something tells me we ought to stick together. Work together.”
Her smile was sardonic as she looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. “Work together. Toward what end, Scorio? Because that’s the other part of this. I’ve ceased growing in power because I’ve come to accept the wall I’ve run into.”
“Run out of ambition?”
“Become a realist,” she corrected. “There’s nothing but Coal out here. Coal and fiends and endless days in which to brood over the injustices of the world.”
“Doesn’t have to be that way.” He shifted his weight, wincing as some of the pains came back to him. “We’re alive against all the odds. Surely—”
“Scorio.” Her smile was pained. “Save the heartwarming speech. You don’t know anything about anything. I was actually born into this world. Raised in it. I’ve seen how it works. Been broken by the system you’re so blithely deciding to—what? Get revenge on? But what does that even mean?”
Scorio gritted his teeth as he mastered his anger. “Forget the revenge. Success is its own vengeance. Let’s just focus on getting powerful. Once we have power, we can dictate our own terms.”
Her expression was a blend of disbelief and amusement. “You’d be adorable if your ignorance wasn’t so frightening. The Houses run vast operations based out of Bastion but whose enterprises stretch across hell. Each has thousands of Great Souls operating its functions, but the truly talented, the most ambitious, the real power brokers abandon the Houses quickly to make for The Pit. Who exactly are you going to dictate terms to? Pyre Lord Praximar? The Charnel Dukes and Crimson Earls of the far reaches? What terms are you going to set?”
“I don’t know!” His cry rang off the walls. With a grimace, he climbed to his feet, his every muscle protesting, but he couldn’t just sit there. “I don’t know, all right? But I won’t hide out here like some whipped dog waiting for death and nursing my grievances! I’m going to fight!” Again his shout bounced off the walls. “I’m going to figure out what I can do and then I’ll bloody well do it, again and again and again until I’ve got some control over my own life!”